Letter to Baron Bethell #15
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely
Letters from Vienna #192
Letter to Baron Bethell #15
Dear James,
It worries me when I read in The Guardian (or The Groniad as we used to call it on account of all its printing errors) about your alleged “misdeeds”. Did you “dirty your bib” as they used to say? Only you know for sure. But it certainly looks bad and I sincerely hope your career doesn’t end in ignominy or you end up in jail, which would be humiliating. On the face of it, it could well be another case of Alan Clark.
In June 2021 The Guardian wrote:
“A health minister is facing fresh calls to lose his job after it emerged that he apparently failed to declare a week’s worth of meetings with companies who went on to be granted £1bn contracts.”
“Labour, who had already been demanding that Lord Bethell be fired for using his private email account for ministerial business, are again demanding his removal. The deputy leader, Angela Rayner, accused the Tory donor of “treating the public purse like his personal cashpoint”.”[1]
In August it continued:
“Labour has called for an inquiry into the use of WhatsApp within the government, after it emerged a health minister replaced his mobile phone before it could be searched for information relevant to £85m of deals that are subject to a legal challenge.”
“James Bethell, who oversaw the award of Covid contracts, is one of those under scrutiny over the way deals for personal protective equipment (PPE) and tests were allocated at the height of the pandemic.”
“As part of legal proceedings issued by the Good Law Project, the government is expected to disclose Lord Bethell’s correspondence including by email, WhatsApp and SMS relating to the award of £85m of contracts for antibody tests to Abingdon Health.”
“The secretary of state has a responsibility to preserve and search documents for information relevant to the case from the point at which judicial review proceedings were issued in late 2020, under the government’s “duty of candour”.”[2]
And in September of that year it was positively triumphant:
“Lord Bethell, the close ally of Matt Hancock who has admitted using his personal email for government business during the pandemic, has been sacked by Boris Johnson.”
“As the prime minister’s reshuffle rolled on through its third day, Bethell was among a string of casualties among junior ministers.”
“The hereditary peer and nightclub entrepreneur was placed under investigation by the House of Lords standards committee in July after it emerged that he had sponsored a parliamentary pass for the former health secretary’s lover, Gina Coladangelo.”
“He has since become embroiled in legal action over his use of private emails. Bethell, who oversaw the award of Covid contracts, admitted to the practice but denied any wrongdoing, telling the Lords: “I have read and signed the ministerial code and I seek to uphold it in everything I do.””
“Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, welcomed Bethell’s departure, but said it should have come earlier. She tweeted: “If Boris Johnson had any integrity he would have sacked him a long time ago. Bethell has used Ministerial Office and taxpayers’ money to enrich his friends instead of serving the public and been dishonest about his private emails.””[3]
Yet, the truth is: even if you are guilty of “dodgy deals”, which I sincerely hope you aren’t, it could have been nothing compared to the money made by oligarchs such as Bill Gates.
Did you take Nicholas Philipson’s course about the Scottish Enlightenment, about Hume and Smith (although the same age you took a year out, which meant that you were one year “below me”)? If you had you’d have called everything Whitty, Ferguson etc. told you into question. The conflicts of interest were and are quite massive:
“1) In 2008, Chief Medical Adviser Prof Chris Whitty, accepted, $40 million from Bill Gates to control British vaccine promulgation: and he stated “COVID-19 vaccines and drugs would need to be in place before measures could be lifted … :”
2) The Imperial College; Neil Ferguson for Covid-19 mortality predictions (0.5 million in UK) accepted £184 million from B. Gates.
3) Patrick Vallance (5-12 yrs.) GlaxoSmithKline ex-director, he chairs SAGE which was created by Bill Gates for to advise WHO & UK gov-on vaccine & immunization policies, research, development, and delivery systems;
4) Gates is the main donor & stakeholder of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, Welcome trust and Pirbright institute who claims to have a patent SARS-CoV-2 and produces its vaccine. He is the main and most influential funder of WHO via which he implements the vaccination of the global population.
5) Prof J. van Tam served the interest of the pharmaceutical industry 1997 - 2000, as an Associate Director at SmithKline Beecham. In April 2001 he moved to Roche as Head of Medical Affairs, before joining Aventis Pasteur MSD in February 2002 as UK Medical Director. He chaired the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) Expert Advisory Group on H5N1 human vaccines, sits on the UK national Scientific Pandemic Influenza Committee (SPI), the UK Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and was a short-term consultant and temporary adviser to the World Health Organization on many occasions. On WHO/van Tam’ advice of was a mass vaccination by H5N1 human vaccines from which Roche and GSK each earned billions £. And said industries was not held liable for the damaged inflicted on thousands of people by their vaccines.
6) Professor Dame Angela McLean, Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, her career and professorship was funded via the Imperial College; as by Bill Gates
7) Sharon Peacock, the director of the National Infection Service: Welcome Trust (BMGF)
8) Maria Zambon, director of Reference Microbiology Services at PHE and head of the UK World Health Organization National Influenza Centre (BMGF)
9) Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust (BMGF)
10) Dr Edward Mullins is a clinical lecturer at Imperial College (BMGF)
11) Dominic Cummings and Ben Warner are related to an artificial intelligence company for data-mining operation which was teamed up with Palantir, founded by the rightwing billionaire Peter Thiel, who shares biotech startups with Bill Gates.”[4]
Whitty, Ferguson etc. etc. are all Deep State characters. How could you have known for sure that they weren’t lying? Ironically: it should have been me that you should have turned to! And you should have been aware that the Edinburgh team (there are times when I am extremely proud of our Alma Mater) showed beyond any shadow of doubt that the modelling of the Imperial Team (doesn’t it sound like University Challenge?) was at best faulty, at worst fraudulent. And you too should have known about Ferguson’s track record for extreme unreliability:
“Professor Ferguson remains the European benchmark for epidemic modelling. Yet it was he who persuaded Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2001 to slaughter 6 million cattle to end foot-and-mouth disease (a decision that cost £10bn and is now considered ridiculous). In 2002 he calculated that mad cow disease would kill around 50,000 Britons and 150,000 more if the disease were transmitted to sheep. In reality there were only 177. In 2005 he predicted that bird flu would kill 65,000 Britons. There were 457 in total.”[5]
One of my formative experiences was reading “The Economist” at school (I can no longer read it; it has become simply appalling!) and it was in “The Economist” that I read about Acton and his dictum: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It is worth quoting the passage in full: “I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position, like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greater names coupled with the greater crimes. You would spare these criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them, higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the sake of historical science.”[6]
But it is late and I must cease for now…
Best,
Michael
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/30/lord-bethell-failed-to-declare-meetings-with-firms-that-got-1bn-contracts
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/aug/04/covid-contracts-minister-lord-bethell-replaced-phone-before-it-could-be-searched
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/17/peer-bethell-who-used-personal-email-for-work-sacked-by-boris-johnson-in-reshuffle
[4] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/scientific_advisers_is_their_pos
[5] https://www.voltairenet.org/article209751.html
[6] https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/lord-acton-writes-to-bishop-creighton-that-the-same-moral-standards-should-be-applied-to-all-men-political-and-religious-leaders-included-especially-since-power-tends-to-corrupt-and-absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely-1887
I didn't know who this Bethell was when I started reading these letters. Power certainly does corrupt!