[Youngian]

Has Farage revealed the Labour defector yet?
John Woodcock appears to have joined Captain Opik on the spaceship to Planet Fuckloon

[Tubby Isaacs]

Quite a few candidates on here, questioning Luke Pollard on Palantir contracts.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2 ... rContracts

The usual suspects all pop up to make the UK awarding a Defence contract to a defence contractor sound dodgy, like it only happened because Mandelson pulled strings, and something about Epstein. I'm increasingly impatient with this lot, who have no interest in Defence at all, or indeed IT. Jez talks about ethics, but the Hackney Peace Group don't work in this area, as far as I know. Any real defence contractor is going to be objectionable to him.

The Minister Luke Pollard actually does a decent job, but he misses a trick by not quoting the Transparency Notice back at them, which gives very plausible technical reasons why the work was awarded to Palantir without a tender. They can believe or disbelieve that, but I'd at least like one of them to have read it. I found it extremely quickly. Among those who haven't read it, of course, is Clive Lewis who makes his usual clever sounding point- indeed a good general one- about pivoting away from US suppliers. The notice explains why that wasn't considered appropriate here.

[Youngian]

Clive Lewis who makes his usual clever sounding point- indeed a good general one- about pivoting away from US suppliers.

He's using geopolitical caution to mask his real concerns about Peter Theil being a sinister ideogically driven fascist that we shouldn't touch with bargepole? Clive's not hiding this hidden agenda very well.