Tory donor Steve Parkin has money to burn. Not only did the company he founded get £11million to deliver PPE to the NHS during the pandemic.
But now the firm has been given another £4.5million of taxpayer cash to incinerate gowns and goggles found to be useless.
And eyebrows will raise at those nice little earners as we reveal Mr Parkin has given £730,000 to the Tories.
Conservative Covid cronyism left a bitter aftertaste long after the virus robbed some of us of our taste buds.
Of £12billion in PPE contracts doled out as the pandemic took hold, more than a quarter went to Tory donors or the mates of ministers.
As nurses and care workers struggled to source enough protection to stay safe, the Tories were spending money hand over fist on PPE that was substandard, defective or overpriced.
It would be like soldiers going into a weapons arsenal and picking duff ammo and jammed guns even though their lives depended on them.
The difference with the Tories making bad choices is that they were playing Russian roulette with other people’s lives.
We hope the Covid public inquiry will uncover all those responsible for this scandal.
So they can be brought to book.
Show you care
The NHS crisis will not be solved until the social care one is. That is why the Mirror backs Christina McAnea’s plan for a National Care Service.
The Unison general secretary wants to see living wage pay, common contracts and standard professional qualifications across the sector.
More than one in 10 patients in hospital beds are fit to be discharged but must stay where they are because they have nowhere to go.
The knock-on effect is admission delays from A&E on to wards and ambulances stuck in hospital car parks unable to unload.
And that is causing one in four deaths among emergency patients.
Scandalously, care homes cannot help ease this pressure because low pay and bad conditions have led to 165,000 vacancies as workers look for less stress and more money stacking supermarket shelves.
A National Care Service would encourage new recruits and persuade existing staff not to quit.
Successive PMs have promised a fully integrated NHS and care service but failed to deliver.
Things are now so desperate Rishi Sunak must be the PM to get this done.
Ooh Lu La...
Quelle horreur. Emily in Paris star Lucien Laviscount admits he failed to grasp the lingo despite working in the French capital for two years.
And mispronunciations led to some embarrassing faux pas.
Could be worse, Lucien. Experts say Korean is a tougher language to master because of its complex grammar and sentence structure.
So be thankful TV bosses chose to put Emily in Paris. Not Emily in Pyongyang.
