The revelation
that it is going to cost £900,000 to have an RAF aeroplane repainted in red,
white and blue to boost the image of the PM when he travels abroad has raised
more than a few eyebrows. There is a minor (?) question about how the PM is
going to fly anywhere without having to go into quarantine for a fortnight when
he returns (he surely wouldn’t want to be caught out breaking his own rules),
although the story seems to suggest that the repainting job is going to take a
while, so perhaps it won’t be finished until after the quarantine rules have
been scrapped. It’s an expensive ego trip.
It made me wonder, though, about this story
from late April about the emergency flight collecting PPE from China (picture from BBC story at the time). It was
all arranged in a huge rush, allegedly, yet somehow the company managed to fit
in the time and money to have the plane repainted in NHS livery before sending
it out to China. Did that little PR exercise really cost them £900.000?
Somehow, I doubt it. And I also doubt that it took very long to get the job
done.
So, what’s the difference? I find myself
wondering if this isn’t one of those very profitable outsourcing contracts which
the MoD has negotiated under which the painting of aircraft is undertaken by a
private company which charges an extortionate amount, completely legitimately
under the terms of a poorly negotiated contract, all in the name of converting
public cost into private profit. A bit like the £5,500
sink or the £884 chair, maybe. At £900,000, someone, somewhere must be
making a lot of money.
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1 comment:
Yet another,relatively minor,episode in the saga of sucking money out of public funds into private coffers. These bastards have been doing it for the last decade and are becoming increasingly brazen about. All those vanity projects are designed with this caper in mind. Profit for the already stinking wealthy, losses fielded by the public purse. Criminals.
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