So if I can just add to the Wikipedia summary on Sir Patrick John Thompson Vallance, he is a British physician, scientist, and clinical pharmacologist who has worked in both academia and industry and, since March 2018, has been the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of the United Kingdom and the holder of 600,000 shares in the Pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline.
And there’s more: the Chief Scientific Adviser is also up for a deferred bonus of 43,111 shares in GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) from his time as president of the multinational company.
And yet more: Vallance has already sold more than £5 million in shares he received during his six year GSK tenure after 2012.
His other qualification for the job he holds is that he has only ever been a researcher in acadaemia – and then big cheese for Big Pharma. He’s never been a frontline medic in his life. Ah: he’s got a gong, he’s one of us, he’s frightfully rich….just the sort of chap we need.
He became CSA to the State in March 2018, nine months before being knighted for services to pharmacology.
In a swift move after the horse bolted out of the Daily Telegraph stables this morning, those in charge of Sir Patrick’s tattered image began removing him from online pages like (for example) Market Screener. Standard practice in the UKSSR these days: man drops bollock, man disappears from balcony wavers in Red Square.
But it appears there is no resignation in the offing. Good God, of course not…I mean, presumably he told the Civil Service about the conflict of interest, right? Wrong: man on the spot Matt Hancock said he read about it today “in a newspaper”. So that’s alright then.
Hancock then used some more rope to hang himself by saying, “I think there are rules around this, and it is important he abided by the rules….I think if you know Sir Patrick Vallance as I do, any suggestion that he is doing anything other than his level best to try and tackle this virus is wrong”.
Mr Hancock (who is a moron in his spare time) should perhaps be asked whether there might be a case for Sir Patrick Bank-Valance “doing his level best to try and tackle this virus via a vaccine made by his former employer”.
What else can one add? It’s sloppy, naive, denialist revolving-doors crony capitalism. I don’t have a left or right wing bone in my body, but I do understand social anthropology in general, and human greed in particular.
This Government is taking “advice” from those who lack either the experience or objectivity required to produce sound advice.
John Ward, aka The Slog. Rapidly getting repetitive strain injury from trying to fight dragons seen by 84% of the population as nice people on the whole really.
This is the CEO of Glaxo Smith Kline, seated next to a bloke you know already during his UK visit in 2019.
And this is the French President Emmanuel Macrony, who has in bed with Pharma giant Sanofi since 2008. Earlier this year, Sanofi signed a joint deal with Glaxo Smith Kline to develop a vaccine against Covid19.
Are you getting it yet?
The Slog 