Some weeks, the theme for these posts just drops into my lap. This is one of those weeks. Last Friday, judgement was given at the High Court that the government had broken the law, by not revealing within the correct timeframe the details of contracts it had awarded without competitive tender during the pandemic. This might sound trivial against the background of all that has been going on, but contracts worth many millions have been awarded without the scrutiny of a tendering process, with the claimed justification of urgency. But many of these have been given to people and companies with connections and friendships to the government, raising doubts about their validity – especially when many were awarded to companies with no previous experience in the products and services for which they had been contracted. One such was the contract given to a friend of the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock…