MOD Procurement

[Guest]

Does anyone have access to the full Sunday Times story (the website being by subscription)?

http://news.sky.com/story/997377/ex-forces-chiefs-in-arms-deal-investigation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/14/defence-military-lobbying-investigation?newsfeed=true

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19939022

[heliocentric]

Does anyone have access to the full Sunday Times story (the website being by subscription)?

Nobody? Well done Mr Murdoch.

[teamsaint]

well, no doubt we can make the story up, at least as accurately !

[amateur51]

Nobody? Well done Mr Murdoch.

Bonzer sport!

[John Shelton]

Nobody? Well done Mr Murdoch.

Indeed. I have now acquired a copy of The Sunday Times (I don't usually bother with a Sunday paper, and then there's the Murdoch thing. However).

The several reports are written in a weird 'investigative' style ('light glinted off the expensive eighteenth-century teaspoons in Admiral so and so's exclusive apartment in the Tower of London' [I kid you not] etc.) and rely on stings (posing as representatives of a South Korean Arms company: one of the journalists when at the Daily Telegraph was involved in getting Vince Cable to say what he said about fixing Murdoch) but the gist is that (a) various recently retired top military men receive fees / retainers for what in the case of the recently retired they prefer to call consultancy work rather than lobbying (lobbying being a rather tricky term in relation to what they are allowed to do in the two years post-retirement), are keen to explore new opportunities for similar work (b) claim to have the ear of their protégés in the MOD /the various Services (people loyal to them) (c) claim closeness to Government ministers / Defence committee Conservative MPs (d) one claims to have influenced a £500 million contract for helicopter technology for an Israeli Arms company which, coincidentally, has some contact via another lobbying organisation with Conservatives for Israel (d) say that the Cenotaph Armistice Day ceremony is a good commercial opportunity because anyone who is anyone is there. And there is something about lobbying for a contract to run privatised military estates.

This is all allegedly, of course, and if it's garbled that's partly because the story is and is in various parts of the paper's main section. None of it would be exactly surprising, nor would it be surprising if they are all in it together. And it will probably disappear under a molehill of complete assurances, indignant expressions from Philip Hammond, and a mountain of Jimmy Saville.