Wuhan virus 2020

[Jimbuna]

Covid-19 support worth £4.5bn lost to error and fraud

An estimated £4.5bn in Covid-19 support has been lost to error and fraud since 2020, the tax authority has revealed.

The money was handed out through schemes to help households and businesses cope with the economic fallout of the pandemic.

The scale of the money lost was detailed in a letter to a committee of MPs overseeing government spending.

The letter says the estimate of £4.5bn did not count money recovered by the UK's tax authority, HMRC.

During the pandemic the government spent billions on a package of support to keep the economy afloat when lockdown restrictions were in place.

Last year a forecast by the UK's official economic analyst, the Office for Budget Responsibility, estimated the total cost of pandemic-related rescue measures to be £310bn.

The chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Harriett Baldwin, asked the government to provide a breakdown of how much of that money was lost to error and fraud.

In response, the chief executive of HMRC, Jim Harra, said the figure was estimated to be £4.5bn in total across two financial years, 2020-21 and 2021-22.

Of this sum, £3.5bn was lost through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, £1bn through the Self Employed Income Support Scheme and £71m through the Eat Out To Help Out.

In the letter, Mr Harra wrote that Covid support schemes "helped millions of people and businesses through the pandemic".

He said, from the beginning of the pandemic, HMRC was "clear that the schemes would be targets for fraud and also that customers operating at pace and under pressure would make mistakes".

The schemes, Mr Harra said, were designed "in such a way as to minimise fraud and error while not unnecessarily delaying payments".

While Ms Baldwin accepted Covid funds were dispersed in a rush, she told the BBC "we do expect the full force of the law to fall on fraudsters when they are found".

HMRC is in the process of attempting to recover Covid support lost to error and fraud.

By the end of March 2022, HMRC said it had recovered more than £762m through compliance activity.

Lord Agnew resigned as a Treasury minister last year, attacking the government's handling of fraudulent Covid business loans.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats say billions of pounds in tax has been left uncollected because thousands of HMRC staff have been transferred to work on Covid and Brexit schemes.

In response to parliamentary questions, Treasury minister Victoria Atkins said about 1,250 HMRC staff were redeployed to work on Covid-19 schemes in 2021-22.

She said revenue recouped by HMRC through compliance activity fell by £6bn in 2021-22, compared to the previous year.

"Civil servants are being moved from one crisis to another in a constant game of whack-a-mole," said Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman, Sarah Olney.

"This is allowing criminals to get away with dodging paying millions of pounds in tax, while hard-working families see their taxes hiked and public services are on their knees."

HMRC said it moves resources "where and when they are most needed" and its compliance work "provides good value to the taxpayer".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64304428

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Nobody knows better what the patient needs and what pills he must take than the PARTY knows!


Doubt this and you get declared insane, irresponsible, anti-social. You get stigmatized, socially "executed", burnt in the media, censored, defamed, character-assassinated. You may, as is the case with COVID, even get criminalised if you doubt the official party dogma. Ypour facts do not matter, they are fake. Your arguments must not be considered, they are irrational.

Its all the plan for centralised control and one-"elite" leadership that no longer stands liable to the people and runs a planned economy - planned down to the smallest detail of your most private of your private life.

Total control. Total tyranny.

You will soon get sanctioned if you do not eat what they want you to eat and if you overstep your monthly or yearly CO2 budget, take my word for it. That is possible once there is no more cash money, because every transaction then tells the dictorship what you have bought to eat. And if you have consummed your year's budget for meat, further transactions to pay for meat will automatically be banned by big brother thanks to no more cash money available as a payment option and all-embracing network-AI. You caused to much CO2 already for one year? Sorry, your holiday flight is not able to be processed. So far they try nudging as a tactic for the most, and clever media manipulation. Sooner or later it will turn into brute and ice-cold force, and choice will be replaced openly with designed lack of alternatives. It already has started.

You wrote this and that in your forum account? Sorry, tickets for bus and train may not be available to you anymore.

You wonder why you have not gotten that job? Well, think twice. You certainly will realise your sinful behaviour or opinion that made you unbearable.

China shows the way on how it is done. Brussels and the Green-leftist gang in all Western countries are all to eager to follow.

You eat more than 2mg of salt that the party wants you to stick with? You reject the precious plant oils that must be sold to make monocultures profitable even when you get sick and die early? Your buying list does not show as much vegetable as they demand you to eat so that the dogma does not get threatened by social disobedience, no compliance, non-unformity? - Fear the wrath of the central committee that knows all this and evertyhing else so much better! Consume! Produce protection money! Vote, no matter who you vote for, just legitimate the system and VOTE! Obey!

You laugh? That is becasue most people still refuse to pout the pieces of the puzzle together. Take me by my word when you are old and near death. It will turn out to be like I said.

On all this, I am beyond the illusions of hope, because here is not just malice intention as well as hilarious stupidity at work, but also the inherent dynamics of a development that has already gained overwhelming momentum.

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

China Covid: Coffins sell out as rural losses mount

The BBC has found evidence of a considerable number of Covid-related deaths in China's rural regions, as the virus spread from big cities to more remote areas with older populations.

In Xinzhou region of northern Shanxi province the coffin makers have been busy. We watched the skilled craftsmen as they carved elaborate decorations into the freshly-cut wood. Over recent months, they say, they haven't had time to stop.

One villager, a customer, told us that at times the coffins have sold out. Laughing with a dose of the black humour you find in the area, he added that those in the funeral industry had been "earning a small fortune".

There has been much debate about the real number of Covid deaths in China, after the virus ripped through its megacities.

Some 80% of the population - more than a billion people - have been infected since China scrapped restrictions in December, according to leading epidemiologist Wu Zunyou. Last weekend China reported 13,000 Covid-related deaths in less than a week, adding to the 60,000 deaths it has counted since December.

But these deaths have been in hospitals. In rural areas there are only sparse medical facilities and those who die at home are mostly not being counted.

There is not even an official estimate for the number of village deaths. But the BBC found evidence the death toll is mounting.

We visited a crematorium and they too have been busy, mourners dressed in white walking forward carrying the ceremonial box which would eventually contain the remains of a loved one.

In another village, we saw one man and woman loading huge tissue paper birds onto the back of a flatbed truck. "They're cranes. You ride the crane into the afterlife," the woman said.

As they packed up other elaborate, Buddhist images newly made from tissue paper they said they'd had an explosion in demand for their funeral decorations, two or three times what's normal.

Everyone we met in this part of Shanxi who is connected to the funeral industry told us a similar story about an increase in deaths and they all attributed it to the coronavirus.

"Some sick people are already very weak," one man said as he continued to load the truck. "Then they catch Covid, and their elderly bodies can't handle it."

We followed the truck to where the artworks were being delivered and met Wang Peiwei, whose sister-in-law had just died.

The mother-of-two in her 50s had suffered from severe diabetes for years and then she caught the coronavirus.

"After she got Covid she had a high fever, and her organs began to fail. Her immune system wasn't strong enough to make it," said Mr Wang.

The courtyard at the family house was filling up with decorations for the ceremony. Mr Wang told us there were still more images, flowers and the like to come.

Standing in front of a tent in the courtyard where her body was covered up he explained that, on the day of the funeral, 16 people would carry her coffin and bury her in accordance with tradition.

He said that, though the cost of funeral arrangements had skyrocketed because of the number of Covid deaths, they would pay the extra money in her honour.

"She was a great person. We must hold a grand event to send her off, the best we can afford," he said.

Every year, hundreds of millions of younger people go back to their hometowns at this time to celebrate the Lunar New Year. It's China's most important festival.

The villages they are returning to are now places where mostly older people live - people who are more vulnerable to Covid.

There has been great concern that this year's Spring Festival mass migration could quickly spread the coronavirus into more remote areas, to deadly effect.

The government warned those in the cities not to go home this year if their elderly relatives had not yet been infected.

Doctor Dong Yongming, who operates a very small village clinic, thinks at least 80% of residents there had already caught Covid.

"All the villagers come to us when they're sick," he said. "We're the only clinic here."

Most who had died there had underlying diseases, he said.

In terms of managing the medicine they had as Covid hit the village, Dr Dong said they would not sell medicine to people beyond their needs.

"For example, I would only give out four Ibuprofen tablets per person," he said. "They don't need two boxes. It'll just be wasted."

However he said he believed the worst of this Covid wave was already behind them: "We haven't had any patients in recent days."

Those who die in this region are buried in the fields. Farmers then continue to plant crops and raise livestock around the mounds of their ancestors.

Driving along the road we noticed fresh mounds of earth with red flags placed on the top. A lot of them. A farmer herding goats confirmed that they were new graves.

"Families have been burying elderly people here after they die. There are just too many," he said.

In his village of a few thousand, he said that more than 40 residents had died during the most recent Covid wave.

"One day someone would die, then the next day someone else. It's been non-stop over the past month," he said.

But in the countryside here, they are quite philosophical about life and death. This farmer said people would still celebrate the new year like they always have.

"My son and daughter-in-law will come back soon," he said.

I asked if locals were worried that family members returning could mean more infections.

"People shouldn't worry. No fear!" he said. "You will still become infected even if you hide. Most of us have already got it and we are fine."

He, and many others are hoping that Covid's most deadly work has already been done and that, for the time being at least, their energy can be spent on being with the living rather than burying the dead.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-64347085

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[Rockstar]

Where did all those little wannabe tyrants and dictators armed with their fanboy science go? You know, the ones that demanded force experimental vaccinations or lose their health care and job if people refused?

Out trying to save the planet now.? LOL

[August]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Where did all those little wannabe tyrants and dictators armed with their fanboy science go? You know, the ones that demanded force experimental vaccinations or lose their health care and job if people refused?

Out trying to save the planet now.? LOL

No, they're all off in the Ukraine thread giving equally bad advice.