[The Red Arrow]

Activist judge and lawyers fuel woke agenda...

Covid: Matt Hancock acted 'unlawfully'* over pandemic contracts

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56125462

*translation: He has been shown to break the law. He is therefore, according to the law and those qualified to pass judgement, a criminal, one guilty of an unlawful act. No need whatsoever for quotation marks implying that a high court judge's verdict is merely an opinion.

[Boiler]

The summing-up on Bailii will be worth a read.

[davidjay]

It used to end careers and bring down governments. Now it doesn't raise an eyebrow. And there will be those who defend it and attack the GLP as elitist, anti-British, unpatriotic.

[Bones McCoy]

So are there any sanctions: Fines (cost of doing business), jail (as if), disqualification from public office?

[The Red Arrow]

Birching, hanging...

[Bones McCoy]

Birching, hanging...

They're usually mad for that sort of thing.

[youngian]

Frost is turning his talents to sort out Ireland. A Gladstone for our times

[Tubby Isaacs]

Assertive stance in what? Writing stiff letters to Dublin and Brussels about the deal he negotiated himself?

[The Red Arrow]

From the twitters -

Government gets convicted of criminal behaviour.

[REDACTED] Johnson promises all UK adults the vaccine just before the Sunday papers go to print.

No connection.

None at all.

[oboogie]

Activist judge and lawyers fuel woke agenda...

Covid: Matt Hancock acted 'unlawfully'* over pandemic contracts

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56125462

*translation: He has been shown to break the law. He is therefore, according to the law and those qualified to pass judgement, a criminal, one guilty of an unlawful act. No need whatsoever for quotation marks implying that a high court judge's verdict is merely an opinion.

The quotation marks are needed because it is a direct quotation of the Judge's ruling i.e. "unlawfully" was the verdict given, not "illegally" or any other term.
"Illegal" describes an action forbidden by law, "unlawful" describes an action not permitted by or conforming to the law. To a layperson, the two words might seem synonymous, from the mouth of a judge, they are not.

[The Red Arrow]

Edjumacational.

So, is he - in the eyes of the law - guilty of a criminal act?

[oboogie]

As I'm sure you are well aware, "criminal" has a specific legal meaning and not all offences are criminal. I've only taught business law (many years ago) and I've never studied criminal law, so I don't know. I expect if you Google long enough you might find the answer.

[The Red Arrow]

It's all sorted now, the law was only ‘technically’ broken and calls for his resignation are 'not what the public really want to see'.

Coronavirus: 'Right' to delay contract transparency in pandemic, says Hancock

Matt Hancock says it was "the right thing to do" to delay publishing contracts during the pandemic, despite a court ruling he acted unlawfully.

A judge ruled the health secretary had "breached his legal obligation" by not publishing details within 30 days of contracts being signed.

But Mr Hancock told the BBC his team had been focused on sourcing PPE.

He said they "spent all of their time buying life-saving equipment, even if the paperwork was a little bit late".

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he would not call for Mr Hancock to resign over the court ruling, saying it was "not what the public really want to see".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56145490

Matt Hancock was allowed to focus on the failure to register PPE contracts within a required time frame rather than who was awarded them. So, it was - how can you criticise us for failure to do the paperwork? rather than, - how can you criticise us for enriching our friends?

From a man who recently introduced a 10 year sentence for incorrectly filling out a form.

[mattomac]

Didn’t do a good job of saving that many lives really.

Remember we are beyond the 80k that some of sage said would be a worse case scenario.

[The Red Arrow]

Meanwhile, at the Cock Inn...


Matt Hancock's ex-neighbour under investigation by UK's medical regulator

Exclusive: MHRA investigating former publican Alex Bourne who won £30m of work producing Covid test vials

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -regulator