George Osborne has just been appointed Chair of the British Museum.
https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1408025266430132226?s=09
He was appointed by his ally Minouche Shafik.
Either Minouche, who is herself Director of the London School of Economics, has not heard of the Government inquiry into the Greensill scandal, or she’s au fait but simply doesn’t care.
Around 2018 former PM David Cameron became a lobbyist for recently liquidated shadow banking entity Greensill Capital.
Lex Greensill, the company’s founder, became a billionaire when SoftBank poured money into the company at the beginning of 2019.
However Cameron exploited his position of former PM by using his contacts to gain access to decision makers, funding and juicy government contracts.
All Cameron had to do was put his hand up and admit what he did was wrong.
Instead he’s decided to balls it out.
The public is rightly seething.
But what can we do?
Boardman
Nigel Boardman is a top corporate lawyer, Government adviser, and City safe pair of hands who Boris Johnson picked to run the Boardman Review, which should report to the Prime Minister on the 30th June.
Boardman has already recently carried out two reviews of government Covid procurement.
Which was in itself a political appointment. While he made some recommendations, Boardman somehow cleared the government and Matt Hancock of rampant looting and corruption.
Boardman’s father was a Tory MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Lord, and Chairman of Nat West as well as holding office in the City of London.
Boardman is still spookily deputy chair of the British Museum according to its website.
This is naughty given he is supposed to be carrying out a review of Greensill Capital’s deep penetration of Central Government.
Greensill did it via revolving door hiring and having staff who were working for both Greensill and the government at the same time.
Boardman would also have known Samantha Cameron through their work at Save the Children.
Cameron was very close to PR magnate Alan Parker who ran the influential Brunswick firm and was Chair of Save the Children.
Sir Alan Parker to bank £70m windfall from the sale of Brunswick stake https://t.co/o1NcvZUrDG via @ThisIsMoney
— Ranjan Balakumaran (@financialeyes) June 24, 2021
Parker did ok out of the EdF China Hinkley deal and was friends with Gordon Brown whose brother also worked as a ‘marketer’ (lobbyist?) for EdF.
Parker appears to have something of the Michael Rimmer about him.
See video below:
Boardman may know Osborne through any number of connections.
Boardman should go from both the museum and the review.
The system is too chummy. And Boardman is clearly a part of that.
And, like Cameron, he’s never going to find himself guilty of anything.
The fact that all the Boardman Review evidence and hearings are to be held privately shows that the juicy stuff will be redacted.
The process is being pre-Maxwellised.
Boardman is himself clearly highly complicit and a beneficiary of the process that rewards high level corruption.
Yes that’s right, corruption rewards corruption.
Boardman must therefore be replaced immediately for the good of the country.
When Theresa May set up the review into historic high level child abuse several of the chairs were repeatedly forced to resign due to conflicts of interest.
Any system, in this case the British Museum, that would allow Osborne to be picked by someone whom Osborne himself appointed is itself a corrupt system.
Where is the due diligence process at the British Museum?
A process is referred to in passing, but what is in it?
The Museum’s BP sponsorship has always attracted the ire of environmental campaigners, so it’s certainly no stranger to controversy.
Reputation-wise, ethical matters have never been its forté.
But might even it, this time, have taken things just a little too far?
Think of all Cameron’s cronies upon whom he conferred contracts and honours.
The ones he appointed to the Lords.
He has infected the DNA of the country with his way of doing things. Just as Pinochet stuffed the chambers with his allies in Chile.
Which is how we have the likes of Matt Hancock and Dido Harding in charge.
Cameron showed them all how it’s done.
By believing Cameron’s bullshit, these corrupt politicians may like to make out that they are just acting according to the laws of human nature.
In yesterday’s post on Jordan Ellenberg’s new book Shape, Cathy O’Neill points out that often people who say they have found the truth about nature actually mean that they have stumbled across the limits of a man made algorithm.
I’m not suggesting that Cameron himself singlehandedly created corruption.
He was preceded by Gordon Brown and Tony Blair who were themselves following in the footsteps of Major and Thatcher and before them Callaghan.
But he was what you might call an influencer.
They appear to all have been competing with each other to do the bidding of fickle transnational capital.
Which brings us back to the British Museum.
The austerity chancellor getting away with overseeing a period of incredible corporate fraud, particularly in the banking sector, has already happened.
One could argue he is particularly well suited to look after a state sponsored looting haul whose main sponsors are always amoral banks and highly polluting anti indigenous energy firms.
But one thing is certain.
You’re not going to hear complacent journalists, editors or newspaper owners calling for Osborne to be prevented from chairing the British Museum.
That’s not how crony capitalism works.
The sad fact is that most people don’t care about whether Osborne chairs the British Museum or not.
That’s how far gone we are.
It’s a form of Stockholm syndrome.
Tory Chancellors have been directly chipping away at the fabric of UK society continuously since 2010.
And the one who has done the most to defund the arts, social security and public services is permanently rewarded without question.
This is the sign of a sick society. A society that rewards psychopathy and penalises the very people it should be helping.
If people are only allowed a voice so we can agree with the policies of the super-wealthy then we may as well stop pretending that anyone except the wealthy matter in this country.
There is no opposition to the Government any more. Over the course of just over ten years Tory Britain has become a permanent state of affairs.
