On Byline Times: The £8m contact tracing app contracts for Covid-19 and plans to outsource its management

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NHS contact tracing app being trialed in the Isle of Wight Pic Credit: Linked In

I have just had a forensic look at the contracts awarded for the controversial Covid-19 contact tracing app which is now being trialed in the Isle of Wight.

Among the surprises are the plan to allow a big Swiss company Zuhkle Technologies AG to take over its management and allow access for overseas engineers to monitor the app. And there is still the controversy over whether the decentralised Google/ Apple app should be used rather than a centralised NHS App collecting data from your smartphone.

Full report on Byline Times and a link to two of the main contracts.

On Byline Times: One trade minister resigns, another trade minister should apologise to Parliament

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Conor Burns, trade policy minister , who resigned today Pic credit: BBC

A rather dramatic tale from the Commons Standards committee out today. Conor Burns, the international trade minister, resigned after the committee recommended he be suspended from Parliament for seven days for abusing Parliamentary rules and privilege to help his dad get paid money in a private financial dispute.

Greg Hands asked to apologise to Parliament Pic credit: greghands.com

A second trade minister, Greg Hands, has been told to apologise to MPs for breaking rules by spending over £4800 on stamps and House of Commons stationery to send out a political newsletter to constituents who had petitioned him on local issues.

Read the full tale and see the reports on Byline Times here.

On Byline Times: UK to impose trade sanctions on Trump tomorrow to meet EU and WTO rules

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Pic credit: BBC

While nearly all the attention is being given to the Covid 19 crisis tomorrow the UK will have to impose a limited number of trade sanctions on the Trump administration under a European Commission directive.

But you will say we have left the EU and Trump is a great friend of Boris Johnson? Well not quite. Until December 31 we abide by EU rules but have no say and this is why we are still caught up in the trade row between Trump and the European Union.

Ironically the EU has used a World Trade Organisation rule on anti dumping to put up the tariffs on a very limited number of goods.And the UK can’t afford to break WTO rules – if it is forced into a No Deal Brexit.

Read the full story on Byline Times here.

The Commons committee report where this is revealed came out yesterday. It is No 11 in a long list of new regulations.

On Byline Times: Refurbishment of the iconic Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben mismanaged by Parliament at huge cost to taxpayers

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Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I have today put out a story on Byline Times some damning findings by the National Audit Office on the refurbishment of the Elizabeth Tower and the Big Ben bell and clock face. You can read it in full here.

The report is important because the government is committed to spending billions of pounds – a £4 billion estimate will go nowhere near the real cost – -refurbishing the Palace of Westminster over a decade.

This project was a tiddler compared to that – originally thought to cost £29 million -now 80 million. And if Parliament’s managers can’t properly manage that – what great mess awaits us over the next decade.

The report also reveals one extraordinary fact which shows that the Victorians were as bad at controlling taxpayer’s money and managing big projects as we are today.

The present building built after fire destroyed most of the old Parliament in 1834 was completed 18 years behind schedule and at three times the original cost.

Effectively the governments of Robert Peel and Lord Palmerson were no better at controlling budgets than those of David Cameron and Boris Johnson today. Plus ca change etc.

Exclusive on Byline Times: How a highly controversial contract to collect data on thousands of English Covid-19 hospital patients was never put out to competitive tender

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Image by Syaibatul Hamdi from Pixabay

An expose by The Guardian earlier this month revealed that confidential data from patients being treated for Cofid-19 in England was being collected and processed by tech companies – two of which were highly controversial companies.

Now after persistently chasing up officials NHS England have admitted that the contracts which involved the US company Palantir – run by Trump supporting right wing billionaire Peter Thiel – and British start up Faculty – which has links to Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief adviser – were never put out to tender.

Read how they did it on Byline Times here

Coronavirus: Why more than ever BackTo60 were right to challenge that judicial review decision over #50sWomen pensions

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My radio interview which is now on the BackTo60 site

One of the most disturbing things coming back to the UK after nearly three months is how the country is now gripped in an inevitable lock down without any sign of an exit – as this nasty virus – Covid-19 – takes a grip on the nation.

For women and men in their 60s the situation is particularly dire. They should be protected but are not. Instead they have the problems of either being pushed out of work and put at the mercy of the hopeless and half finished Universal Credit system or the government’s long delayed payments for the self employed for any money.

They know they are a high risk group recognised by the World Health Organisation ( WHO) but they are caught between surviving on savings or going out to work – including for the NHS and in care homes – knowing they stand a greater chance of getting the virus. The two scenarios I illustrated in my article for Byline Times.

But probably the most pleasing thing that happened while I was away was the decision of the Court of Appeal to grant an appeal from the two 50swomen on behalf of BackTo60 on all grounds after the disappointing judicial review decision. which rejected their case.

The women I know have a long wait until July for the hearing but if they hadn’t taken this step they would be nowhere under this present Tory government.

The applicants at the time would not have known how damaging the coronavirus would be but fortunately they got their right to appeal before the courts closed down to hear most new cases. The latest situation at the Court of Appeal can be seen in their latest briefing( April 17).

The fact that BackTo60 has got an appeal on all grounds is significant given the judicial review rejected their case on all grounds and the judge who decided this also wanted to stop an appeal.

Lawyers for the claimants were confident that they could win permission to appeal – and they were right.

At the time detractors – many of whom should have known better – were making wild claims about the crowd funding appeal – which was set at a specific figure on the advice of the lawyers- and trying to stir up animosity against BackTo60. They did not succeed and the result is the issue remains very much alive.

The other key result is that for the government the issue will have to be faced again – ministers have not succeeded in squashing the campaign in the courts. The government knows it will have to argue its case again and 3.8 million women will have a voice at the Royal Courts of Justice to say why they were mistreated and swindled out of their pensions.

I have given a radio interview which is also on BackTo60 and you can listen to it at the top of this blog.

50s women dancing in front of the Royal Court of Justice after the judge granted their request for a judicial review the first time

On Byline Times: WHO guidelines ignored to shield over 60s because UK “not a developing nation.”

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Image by Syaibatul Hamdi from Pixabay

My first new article on Byline Times reveals the reason why the government is sticking to shield only those in their 70s rather than follow World Health Organisation guidelines to shield the over 60s. It is because the UK thinks this should only be applied to developing nations.

This disputed by WHO who point out that 95 per cent on the deaths in Europe are among the over 60s with France, Italy and Spain responsible for the vast majority of European deaths.

The article highlights the plight of people in their 60s – most of them still working because of the rise in the pension age – with some left with no money as jobs collapse and others working in the NHS where the risk of Covid- 19 is at its highest.

Read the full story on Byline Times here

Back to Work: Restarting investigations

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Back to Work even if Westminster is closed – except for virtual contacts

This is just a note to my readers that after an absence of nearly three months I am now back in rather a different England that I left in January.

I have been extremely lucky as the trip I took with my disabled wife sailing round the whole of South America was about the safest place to be at the time – as the ship kept ahead of the spread of COFID 19 until the every end.

Then a very wise captain decided not admit any new passengers or crew when we docked at Fort Lauderdale and only allow passengers to disembark – not even go ashore and return – protecting the ship from the virus.

We then sailed straight for Southampton and were able to dock without facing the terrible fate some cruise liners had to endure where passengers had caught the disease. Cunard deserve a lot of praise for this. I will put up a blog with lots of pictures of what we saw in South America at a later date – as an antidote to today’s gloomy situation.

But now having had to painfully adapt to the new situation and look after and protect my wife from this invisible scourge I am back to investigating from home again.

I have a lot to catch up. I am planning fresh articles on developments on the BackTo60 campaign and the continuing plight of #50sWomen now hit by the fall out from the coronavirus. While I was away their victory at the Court of Appeal to challenge the findings of the judicial review on all grounds was an amazing achievement.

I am also back working for Byline Times which is doing a series of investigations in to the NHS and the coronavirus and I will keep an eye out for any other issues in Whitehall that are being buried by the current crisis.

I also have a number of more long term and complicated investigations – nearly all raised by people who contacted me directly and are taking many months to sort out. You will know who you are but I ask you for some patience as it will take time to get round to them.

In the meantime it will soon be back to business as usual.

Travelogue Kennedy Space Center: The billionaires’ space race to Mars

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SpaceX building at Cape Canaveral

Imagine in 40 years time booking a 14 day holiday on Amazon Prime to hike the craters of the moon. Or a tourist  world voyage to Mars.

Visiting the Kennedy Space Center on a huge nature reserve on North  Merritt Island this year is not  just awesome  but at an extraordinary time in its history.The Florida site is not only where NASA does its top level research as well as showcasing its past achievements  it is now the place where the world’s richest men are competing with each other to launch into space.

 If you ever wondered where the huge profits of international capitalist companies are going, most of the money they have made is being spent here. They are gambling on a new lucrative tourist business that will be worth billions in the future. And they are changing the face of Cape Canaveral. Dotted among the state owned space facilities are brand new space centres owned by private individuals and companies each competing with each other to build rockets , space capsules and launch sites . The only one missing is billionare Richard Branson whose Virgin Galatic company is based elsewhere.

Thus you have Elon Musk, worth $37.7billion, and owner of Tesla electric cars ,with SpaceX, planning with his Falcon rocket to take US astronauts to the space station and then planning to go to the Moon and beyond. He is competing with the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos, worth $125.3 billion and owner of Amazon whose Blue Origen company wants to go to the Moon. And you have Boeing with a base here who want to expand from building aircraft to spacecraft.

And what is also interesting is that the Space centre itself has the Journey to Mars centre where enthusiastic scientists are openly aiming to recruit the next generation to work on their space programme to “solve the impossible ” for the Mars mission.

The talk aimed at today’s ten year olds is premised that if you follow the history of the development of flight within 40 years what could be accomplished by a few pioneers will become commonplace for commercial services for tourists. Hence the interest in the commercialisation of space.

On the  cruise ship one of the most interesting lectures came from a NASA scientist who explained some of the pioneering work being done to aid the space project.Dr Lawrence Kutznetz showed that the breadth of research was spilling over into fields that could help the   disabled , aid medical research,and go the limits of technology.One worldwide research project involves designing a light weight spacesuit from scratch which will be essential if anyone wants to roam around Mars. Unlike the Moon Martian Gravity is similar to Earth’s and no human could walk more the few yards without collapsing under the weight of what they have to carry to stay alive. So using the Internet, peer reviewed research  is designing new materials, sealing the helmet from the rest of the body and allowing the rest of the suit to leak

Another project has very recently discovered by mistake that a particular drug when used on elderly mice caused cells covering its whole body to regenerate turning the equivalent of a 60 year old mouse to having the energy of an adolescent.

Scientists are not quite clear how this happened. The implications of this last experiment I can imagine will be very interesting for our wealthy billionaires funding the space programme – imagine being able to live until you are 150 – double the present lifespan.Or imagine Donald Trump or Rupert Murdoch being offered a double lifespan.Perhaps not.

Other experiments have discovered that if you link two people’s brains using non evasive electrodes it is possible by thought alone to  operate another person’s artificial hand.

So not only is the space centre an exciting place to visit but some of the research going on there is in the realm of science fiction.

Saturn 5 rocket