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The sleaze factor around Matthew Hancock, the disgraced UK health minister

As well as the hypocrisy of a man who seemed at times to delight in locking down fellow citizens during the pandemic, here are some other reasons for enjoying the spectacle of this turd being forced to spend time having rotten tomatoes, dead cats and other items thrown against him in the stocks:

Among the beneficiaries of his department’s largesse are Topwood, a company run by his sister and brother-in-law, in which he has a 20 per cent stake, which secured a contract with NHS Wales worth £150,000; Alex Bourne, who used to run Hancock’s local pub and won a £30million deal for Covid tests despite having no previous experience in the sector; and Hancock’s married lover Gina Coladangelo, appointed to a taxpayer-funded role, and her brother, an executive at a private healthcare company which has won a string of public sector contracts.

From an article by Daniel Miller.

What is perhaps unsurprising is that there is not more anger about this. It’s as if this level of jobs-for-the-boys/girls is now par for the course. The ironies abound. A few years ago, the UK enacted something called the Bribery Act, designed to stop UK companies bribing officials and others into winning contracts. To be clear, it is not stated anywhere I know that what Hancock (an unfortunate surname) did was illegal, but it sails pretty close to the wind. Directors of companies and those in public positions have to disclose a lot these days. I’ll be interested to see what ultimately happens.

To go all libertarian “meta-context” here, a berk such as Hancock is political road-kill, a footnote to history as and when it this melancholy period of history is written. But what he represents is how in the hunt for fame and riches, the public realm attracts such bottom-feeders. Brass neck, a certain pushiness and so forth, can take certain people very far. With such a large chunk of our lives controlled or mediated by the State, such creatures flourish. Large C and small conservatives are supposed to understand all this. Yesterday, the US marked Independence Day and the Founders crafted the Constitution and the elaborate set of checks and balances with such issues in mind. What is troubling about today is that I see zero sign anywhere, and certainly not from the Boris Johnson administration, about learning wider lessons from the venality on display in the Hancock case.

Addendum: I see the Queen (who would have been advised by Mr Johnson) has conferred a collective George Cross medal on the National Health Service. In the eyes of some, the NHS should have been renamed the National Covid Service over the past 18 months or so. To honour a socialist entity such as the NHS is quite a bold step. The only two other collective holders of the GC are the island of Malta (my second nation by marriage) and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

16 comments to The sleaze factor around Matthew Hancock, the disgraced UK health minister

  • john in cheshire

    I think there is a lot of anger over the corruption surrounding Mr Hancock. But the MSM and even the MPs are carefully ignoring the whole matter. From my MPs response, they seem to be saying that now Mr Hancock has been removed from office that’s sufficient punishment and an end to the matter.
    But many of us want a police criminal investigation of him, his mates and lovers and all those advisers, MPs and Civil Servants who played such prominent roles in the events over the past 18 months.
    And where corruption is unearthed, we want our money back.

  • decnine

    The use of care home residents and staff as human shields by the NHS deserves prosecution for Crimes Against Humanity. This GC is merely rolling the pitch ahead of the “COVID Enquiry”. Its conclusions have already been decided and the NHS will be portrayed as heroic and saintly.

  • asiaseen

    If I were Maltese I would be campaigning for the government to return the collective GC to HMQ, it has been debased beyond belief

  • Roué le Jour

    you pretty much have to be a psychopath to prosper as a politician, with the result that the system which was supposed to deliver us from malevolent idiots, has instead delivered us bound into the hands of malevolent idiots.

  • The George Cross award has been in the pipeline for a half-a-year plus. This award does cheapen the medal – but one can hope the timing means that the upcoming ‘ending of restrictions’ will be real this time (though it may just mean that June’s ending was meant to be real when the award date was agreed).

    It will annoy Hancock that Javid is the minister at the time, not him – but I feel, with the OP, that Hancock deserves to be annoyed a bit more than that. However it is well to remember that Hancock’s deference to his Sir Humphrey Applebys and (un)SAGE advisors did more harm to us than a questionable deal and a “doesn’t apply to me” rule violation, contemptible though both were.

  • Tim Worstall

    Only a tiny thing about the NHS contracts.

    Yes, wife’s company, Hancock took a 20% stake (and declared it). But NHS Wales is not part of his department, it’s a devolved matter.

  • The Jannie

    A GC for the death service? Do me a favour, Brenda. A shagging with a ragman’s trumpet would be more apt.

  • APL

    John in Cheshire: “But many of us want a police criminal investigation of him, his mates and lovers and all those advisers, MPs and Civil Servants who played such prominent roles in the events over the past 18 months.”

    And his boss.

    After all, you know the old saying, a fish rots from the head.

    And not so long ago, there were all the sob stories about Johnson giving up the lucrative job editing whatever rag he was editing, and it was so unfair that he had to get by with all those grace and favor stately homes, a fat expense account and all on just £161,000 a year.

    Tim Worstall: “.. But NHS Wales is not part of his department, it’s a devolved matter.”

    But aren’t these grifters supposed to ‘avoid the appearance of conflict of interest’ ?

    Singularly failed in this instance.

  • Phil B

    You lot truly expect to have the restrictions lifted on 19th? Silly people. It’s hay fever season …

    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/07/why-do-i-get-feeling-theyre-getting.html

  • Paul Marks

    The National Health Service saved over a hundred thousand lives by the Early Treatment of Covid 19 with a combination of well established (and cheap) medications for vulnerable people. Thus keeping the hospitals free for people suffering from cancer, heart disease and-so-on.

    Except the NHS did no such thing. It did nothing of the kind. Neither did any other Western health system – government or corporate.

    As for Mr Hancock?

    Following international policy to do terrible harm to tens of millions of people = no punishment at all.

    But “bonking” someone = out in disgrace.

  • Bogdan the Aussie

    It’s ALMOST as bad as in my former commie Poland…

  • APL

    Paul Marks: “But “bonking” someone = out in disgrace.”

    It ain’t just ‘bonking someone’, though is it? It’s bonking a subordinate, who got the ‘position’ because she had a relationship with Hancock.

    But yes, I’d prefer he lost his job because he was a nasty little creep with a hitler complex, who drove a coach an horses through what’s left of the British consitution. While we’re at it can we we get rid of that worm Blair too, please?

  • Mr Ed

    Yes, the George Cross for the NHS, an award ‘for gallantry’, I wrote about one recipient, the last ‘earned’ in the reign of George VI, presented to his widow by the new Queen Elizabeth II (of England) as George Vi had died in the meantime, Flt-Lt John Quinton, who gave away his only parachute after a mid-air collision.

    How far the UK has fallen (if you pardon the phrase) during the reign of QEII.

    I would approve the GC for the NHS, if it were posthumous, so we could scrap it with a meaningless honour. Then we might have scope for medical treatment in this country being available to most people. This from 2013.

    health service patients are 45 per cent more likely to die in hospital than in the US.

    As for honours, they don’t exist, they are a voluntaristic concept, they exist if you believe in them. Remember what Oliver Cromwell said of the Quaker George Fox?

    Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can.

  • Finn Harp

    Sad display. I HOPE that QEII has been misled by the Quislings in her service.

    The British NHS – especially the leadership – should be in line for prison time. Charges to include fraud and reckless disregard for actual science, you know – openly debated science decided by facts and logic not political narrative.

    Probably the most important thing for a monarch is to have free, unfiltered access to reliable information. Same thing is critical for a self reliant citizenry. The Global Deep State seems to have locked up information with its media and Big Tech censorship.

    Don’t have a good plan to rollback the reset, but I know we must find one to avoid the final descent into another Dark Age. God bless, protect and inspire good men and women to win back our freedom.

  • APL

    An old man in a chair.