• Contact
  • About
  • Authors
DONATE
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
  • Login
Yorkshire Bylines
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Brexit
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Home Affairs
    • Transport
    • World
    Emmanuel Macron

    French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

    Rail strikes

    Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

    cost of living march london

    Trade union movement marches to demand better

    European Union

    After the seismic shocks of Brexit and Covid, what next for the European Union?

    Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

    What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

    Refugee Week

    Refugee week: a chance to celebrate refugees

    Yorkshire cows

    British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

    Julian Assange

    Julian Assange’s extradition given the green light by the UK home secretary

    RSPB heritage event

    RSPB heritage event to tell the story of the Dearne Valley, from coal face to wild place

    Trending Tags

    • Johnson
    • Coronavirus
    • Labour
    • Starmer
    • NI Protocol
    • Brexit
    • Culture
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Home Affairs
    • Transport
    • World
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Culture
    • Dance
    • Food
    • Music
    • Poetry
    • Recipes
    • Sport
    Nostell Priory, Wakefield

    Glastonbury? What’s Glastonbury? When the music world came to Wakefield

    Headingley Cricket Stadium

    A view from the Roses match: is everything ‘rosey’ in English cricket?

    Bettys' Fat Rascals

    Scallywags, scoundrels and rascals abound in Yorkshire (we do like our scones)

    'Woke' beliefs

    Woke and proud: Compassion must never be allowed to go out of fashion

    Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

    What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

    Red Ladder

    Climbing the Red Ladder – bringing theatre to the community

    Kaiser Chiefs in Doncaster

    Kaiser Chiefs never miss a beat in Doncaster

    Bradford Council leader Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, second from right, is joined by Keighley Creative representatives, from left, Georgina Webster, Jan Smithies and Gemma Hobbs.

    Bradford announced as City of Culture 2025

    Queen cakes fit for a Queen

    Queen Cakes fit for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

    • Food
    • Music
    • Poetry
    • Sport
  • Business
    • All
    • Economy
    • Technology
    • Trade
    Freya Osment from Northern Gas Networks

    International Women in Engineering Day 2022

    Rail strikes

    Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

    conservative party

    The Conservative Party: fiscally irresponsible and ideologically incapable of addressing the current crises

    Yorkshire cows

    British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

    cost-of-living-crisis-in-voluntary-sector

    Cost-of-living crisis looming for the voluntary sector

    Money on the floor - £20 notes

    The huge cost of Brexit is being seriously understated

    Financial problems

    Surge in bad debt and late payments indicate mounting business distress in Yorkshire

    An evening photo tour of Drax power station near Selby, North Yorkshire, with excellent light towards sunset.

    Winter blackouts and rationing for six million homes as government plans for disruption to energy supply

    Jar with money cascading out of it

    Boosterism doesn’t put food on the table

    Trending Tags

      • Economy
      • Technology
      • Trade
    • Region
    No Result
    View All Result
    • Home
    • News
      • All
      • Brexit
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Health
      • Home Affairs
      • Transport
      • World
      Emmanuel Macron

      French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

      Rail strikes

      Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

      cost of living march london

      Trade union movement marches to demand better

      European Union

      After the seismic shocks of Brexit and Covid, what next for the European Union?

      Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

      What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

      Refugee Week

      Refugee week: a chance to celebrate refugees

      Yorkshire cows

      British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

      Julian Assange

      Julian Assange’s extradition given the green light by the UK home secretary

      RSPB heritage event

      RSPB heritage event to tell the story of the Dearne Valley, from coal face to wild place

      Trending Tags

      • Johnson
      • Coronavirus
      • Labour
      • Starmer
      • NI Protocol
      • Brexit
      • Culture
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Home Affairs
      • Transport
      • World
    • Politics
    • Opinion
    • Lifestyle
      • All
      • Culture
      • Dance
      • Food
      • Music
      • Poetry
      • Recipes
      • Sport
      Nostell Priory, Wakefield

      Glastonbury? What’s Glastonbury? When the music world came to Wakefield

      Headingley Cricket Stadium

      A view from the Roses match: is everything ‘rosey’ in English cricket?

      Bettys' Fat Rascals

      Scallywags, scoundrels and rascals abound in Yorkshire (we do like our scones)

      'Woke' beliefs

      Woke and proud: Compassion must never be allowed to go out of fashion

      Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

      What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

      Red Ladder

      Climbing the Red Ladder – bringing theatre to the community

      Kaiser Chiefs in Doncaster

      Kaiser Chiefs never miss a beat in Doncaster

      Bradford Council leader Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, second from right, is joined by Keighley Creative representatives, from left, Georgina Webster, Jan Smithies and Gemma Hobbs.

      Bradford announced as City of Culture 2025

      Queen cakes fit for a Queen

      Queen Cakes fit for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

      • Food
      • Music
      • Poetry
      • Sport
    • Business
      • All
      • Economy
      • Technology
      • Trade
      Freya Osment from Northern Gas Networks

      International Women in Engineering Day 2022

      Rail strikes

      Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

      conservative party

      The Conservative Party: fiscally irresponsible and ideologically incapable of addressing the current crises

      Yorkshire cows

      British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

      cost-of-living-crisis-in-voluntary-sector

      Cost-of-living crisis looming for the voluntary sector

      Money on the floor - £20 notes

      The huge cost of Brexit is being seriously understated

      Financial problems

      Surge in bad debt and late payments indicate mounting business distress in Yorkshire

      An evening photo tour of Drax power station near Selby, North Yorkshire, with excellent light towards sunset.

      Winter blackouts and rationing for six million homes as government plans for disruption to energy supply

      Jar with money cascading out of it

      Boosterism doesn’t put food on the table

      Trending Tags

        • Economy
        • Technology
        • Trade
      • Region
      No Result
      View All Result
      Yorkshire Bylines
      No Result
      View All Result
      Home Opinion

      Honesty is one of a range of options

      Roger Winterbottom admires Dominic Cummings’ honesty in explaining how the special adviser’s chums somehow came to be the recipients of large government contracts without any competition.

      Roger WinterbottombyRoger Winterbottom
      09-03-2021 14:05
      in Opinion, Politics
      Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

      Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

      5
      VIEWS
      Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
      ADVERTISEMENT

      It’s great that the covid vaccine programme is so successful. With any luck, I’ll be able to ditch all that sugar-free kombucha and kimchi which Gwyneth Paltrow has been making me take, which will be a relief all round. As a result of the good news, the government has delivered its honest assessment of the roadmap out of lockdown.

      The Telegraph reported that you’ll first be able to meet a friend on a park bench, then have an outdoor picnic, which will be followed by outdoor sports such as tennis or golf. Pubs and hospitality will come later. Sounds good! I remember going on a stag do with much the same itinerary.

      With government successes rarer than a postman in long trousers, it seems ironic that, having looked at the outstanding work of the NHS vaccination programme, the government has honestly concluded that the NHS really needs to be reorganised again and more power given to the health secretary – presumably so ministers can farm out some more work to their mates in the horse-racing fraternity. Not that the equine community has much to boast about: they may not flog dead horses, but honestly some do sit on them to take phone calls.

      We shouldn’t be too hard on Matt Hancock though. Tough decisions had to be made a year ago at the outset of the covid crisis: such as, shall I put a health professional in charge of test and trace, or my personal friend from the Jockey Club who messed up running Talk Talk? And should I procure PPE from a professional supplier, or give a contract to my mate who runs the local pub?

      Some of those contracts went to pest control companies, crisp manufacturers and, indeed, pub landlords. They are being challenged in the courts by the Good Law Project and others, along with the award of a contract worth over half a million pounds to a public relations firm, Public First, run by some of Dominic Cummings’ old friends. As part of that court case, Cummings explains the procurement in his witness statement: “I knew [Public First] would give us honest information unlike many companies in this sector”, he said, adding, “Very few companies in this field are competent, almost none are very competent, honest and reliable”.

      "Pug Poses With Dalek" by zoomar is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
      Opinion

      Johnson the obsessed Dalek

      byRoger Winterbottom
      11 February 2021

       

      Ah yes, honesty. It’s important isn’t it? But is it the best policy, or one of a range of options? You may have got the impression that Cummings wouldn’t recognise honesty if it accompanied him on a 250-mile drive to Durham and lodged with him in his second home during lockdown, but you’d be wrong. It’s because Cummings is so honest that he simply had to tell the truth about the need to test his eyesight by driving to a tourist destination on his wife’s birthday. People may have got the wrong idea otherwise.

      “Obviously I did not request Public First be brought in because they were my friends”, he continued. Obviously. “I would never do such a thing.” No, of course not. And yet, in a very real sense, that is what somehow happened.

      “I am a special adviser and as such I am not allowed to direct civil servants”, Cummings added. Hmm. That must come as news to the civil servant he sacked and had removed from Downing Street by armed police. And to the civil servants who lost their jobs when Sajid Javid refused to give in to Cummings’ demands to sack them. Still, we know how important honesty is to Cummings, so it must be true.

      “However”, Cummings’ statement went on, “as a result of my suggestion, I expected people to hire Public First. The nature of my role is that sometimes people take what I say as an instruction and that is a reasonable inference as people assume I am often speaking for the prime minister”. Ah, that makes sense now. He didn’t tell anyone what to do, he simply expected others to take what he said as an instruction. Obviously, not the same thing at all. It was more like Henry II having his wishes interpreted. “Will no one rid me of this turbulent public relations contract?”

      “A few people did raise the question of how we could justify this as value for money”, said Cummings. Really? I honestly can’t imagine why. “I responded that this was not the normal world, we were in a once-a-century pandemic and many thousands of pounds here was trivial if it helped us save lives and minimise economic destruction … The extra money spent on doubling the focus groups and polling was essentially irrelevant in those circumstances.”

      To those in government, thousands of pounds are “trivial” and “irrelevant”. Honestly? I suspect if I arranged for my mate to get half a million quid, he might not find the sum quite so trivial. Still, if the PR work got results, who’s complaining? “Thousands of lives were at stake, hundreds of billions of pounds were at stake … I am sure that the work done by Public First allowed better and faster decisions and this saved lives and minimised damage”, said Cummings.

      Ah yes, the government was renowned for its fast decisions during those first months of the pandemic. Thank goodness for that extra PR work without which we might have had the worst economic hit of the G7 nations, over 120,000 covid deaths and one of the highest mortality rates in the world. What’s that? Oh.

      Maybe Cummings could have funnelled – sorry, “suggested” – a few quid to Boris Johnson as he seems to be on his uppers again, needing to set up a charity to cover the cost of redecorating his spare room. The poor chap doesn’t have much money left each month after his child maintenance payments. Mind you, I hear Changing Rooms is coming back to our screens soon – no doubt Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen could brighten up Downing Street with a few bits of MDF and a feature wall while Johnson meets a friend on a park bench. I’m sure someone honestly could justify that as value for money.

       

      ADVERTISEMENT
      Previous Post

      UK exports suffer extra hit amid double whammy of covid and Brexit

      Next Post

      “Say ah!” Rishi Sunak’s modern day medicine show

      Roger Winterbottom

      Roger Winterbottom

      Despite studying classics at university, Roger has somehow managed to avoid becoming prime minister. Technologist and coder by day, he spends his spare time trying to scrape humour from the political barrel. Or at least he would do if the dog would leave him alone for five minutes.

      Related Posts

      Conservative Party Meeting
      Politics

      Hypocrisy, desperation and excuses: Conservative Party clutch at straws over by-election losses

      bySue Wilson MBE
      27 June 2022
      10/05/2022 Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the House of Commons. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street
      Politics

      The country needs more than just ‘Booting Boris out of Downing Street’

      byDr Stella Perrott
      26 June 2022
      Emmanuel Macron
      Politics

      French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

      byAnn Moody
      25 June 2022
      March for women
      Politics

      Women of Wakefield: people power only works if the people use that power

      byProfessor Juliet Lodge
      24 June 2022
      your vote matters wakefield by-election
      Politics

      Spotlight on some of the smaller parties in the Wakefield by-election

      byWill Barber Taylor
      22 June 2022
      Next Post
      Photo by Muhammad Haikal Sjukri on Unsplash

      “Say ah!” Rishi Sunak’s modern day medicine show

      Want to support us?

      Can you help Yorkshire Bylines to grow and become more sustainable with a regular donation, no matter how small?  

      DONATE

      Sign up to our newsletter

      If you would like to receive the Yorkshire Bylines regular newsletter, straight talking direct to your inbox, click the button below.

      NEWSLETTER

      LATEST

      Conservative Party Meeting

      Hypocrisy, desperation and excuses: Conservative Party clutch at straws over by-election losses

      27 June 2022
      Nostell Priory, Wakefield

      Glastonbury? What’s Glastonbury? When the music world came to Wakefield

      26 June 2022
      10/05/2022 Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the House of Commons. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street

      The country needs more than just ‘Booting Boris out of Downing Street’

      26 June 2022
      Emmanuel Macron

      French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

      25 June 2022

      MOST READ

      10/05/2022 Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the House of Commons. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street

      The country needs more than just ‘Booting Boris out of Downing Street’

      26 June 2022
      Conservative Party Meeting

      Hypocrisy, desperation and excuses: Conservative Party clutch at straws over by-election losses

      27 June 2022
      Nostell Priory, Wakefield

      Glastonbury? What’s Glastonbury? When the music world came to Wakefield

      26 June 2022
      Photo credit Robert Sharp / englishpenLicensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

      The Davis Downside Dossier

      1 January 2021

      BROWSE BY TAGS

      antivaxxers Charity climate change Coronavirus Cost of living Creative industries Crime Cummings Democracy Devolution education Equality Farming Fishing hgv History Immigration Johnson Journalism Labour Local Democracy Mental Health mining money NHS NI Protocol omicron Pies pollution poverty PPE Public Health Review shortage social media Starmer tax travel Ukraine Yorkshire
      Yorkshire Bylines

      Yorkshire Bylines is a regional online newspaper that supports citizen journalism. Our aim is to publish well-written, fact-based articles and opinion pieces on subjects that are of interest to people in Yorkshire and beyond.

      Learn more about us

      No Result
      View All Result
      • Contact
      • About
      • Letters
      • Donate
      • Privacy
      • Bylines network
      • Shop

      © 2022 Yorkshire Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

      No Result
      View All Result
      • Home
      • News
        • Brexit
        • Education
        • Environment
        • Health
        • Home Affairs
        • Transport
        • World
      • Politics
      • Opinion
      • Lifestyle
        • Culture
        • Dance
        • Food
        • Music
        • Poetry
        • Recipes
        • Sport
      • Business
        • Economy
        • Technology
        • Trade
      • Donate
      • The Compendium of Cabinet Codebreakers
      • The Davis Downside Dossier
      • The Digby Jones Index
      • Newsletter sign up
      • Cartoons by Stan
      • Authors

      © 2022 Yorkshire Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

      Welcome Back!

      Login to your account below

      Forgotten Password?

      Retrieve your password

      Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

      Log In