the times | Thursday August 6 2020 1GM 27
Leading articles
fertiliser and bombs, had been confiscated from a
ship bound for Mozambique in 2013. Scandalously
it was left in the port, with the inevitable and
horrific outcome.
Hassan Diab, the Lebanese prime minister, said
that those responsible would pay a price. Yet in
truth the Lebanese governing class itself is
culpable in presiding over a long decline in living
standards and security. The vast reconstruction
costs, which Beirut’s governor has estimated at
more than $3 billion, are far outside the capability
of the Lebanese state. Even before Covid-19, the
economy was in crisis and the country’s infra-
structure was crumbling. Widespread protests in
October demanded a replacement of the govern-
ment. A new one did take office, led by Mr Diab, but
without even a semblance of democratic legitimacy.
There was no election; the government was hand-
picked by the same sectarian powerbrokers who
have long dominated Lebanese public life.
The coronavirus crisis has hastened an
economic slump. The government has defaulted
on external borrowings and has minimal currency
reserves, while looking to the International
Monetary Fund for emergency assistance. This
does not add up. No official assistance, let alone
sovereign borrowing at market interest rates, isfeasible if the government cannot be relied upon
to meet its obligations. The currency has collapsed
and the banking system is under severe strain.
The Gulf states that might have extended sup-
port in the past are loath to do so while Hezbollah,
backed by Iran and Syria, freely operates. A strong
government would disarm Hezbollah yet Lebanon
is too weakened by sectarianism for that to happen.
By coincidence, the International Criminal Court
will deliver its verdict this week on the murder of
the former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri
in 2005. Few doubt that the assassination was
carried out by Hezbollah at the behest of President
Assad of Syria.
The western democracies have good reasons to
support Lebanon rather than allow it to slide into
further misrule and mayhem. They should offer
emergency aid but ultimately Lebanon’s govern-
ment must take responsibility for restructuring a
sclerotic economy and diversifying its revenues.
And to establish firm governance, it must confront
the state’s internal enemies, specifically the clients
of Assad. The people of Lebanon have suffered
grievously from violence, stagnation and now a
catastrophe born of criminal negligence. Their
demands 15 years ago were not heeded. They must
be now.churlish. However, they can and should be held to
account for the subsequent steps they have taken
to address the shortfall. They had no excuse to
gamble public money on contracts for firms mani-
festly unqualified to produce PPE, especially given
offers of help from experienced manufacturers
such as Burberry and Rolls-Royce. Yet that, we
report today, is what happened.
Some £140 million of PPE bought from an
extermination supplies firm and a confectionery
wholesaler is languishing in warehouses, untested.
It is not clear that the equipment will meet NHS
guidelines. Whitehall’s largest known PPE contract
was awarded to Ayanda Capital, a private equity
firm, at a cost of £252 million. Officials were appar-
ently untroubled that it had never manufactured
the kit or held a government contract before. That
the 50 million masks it was contracted to supply
are deemed unfit for use is thus unsurprising. The
£177 million cost will not be recovered.
Such expenses are unforgivable and ought to
have been spared by the application of the most
rudimentary standards of public procurement. It
is concerning, therefore, that Ayanda’s contractwas initially awarded to a company owned by
Andrew Mills, a government trade adviser. Its
share capital was just £100. Mr Mills denies wrong-
doing but ministers must explain why a matter of
life and death was subcontracted to an individual
and company without relevant experience. This
would be bad enough without an alarming lack of
transparency in all three cases. The Times has only
been able to bring them to the attention of the
taxpayer thanks to a court challenge by the Good
Law Project, an advocacy group.
Throughout the pandemic, ministers have been
able to rely on the goodwill and patience of a
public that has understood the challenges of
responding to a crisis of such magnitude. Voters
will not be so forgiving of these catastrophic
failures of due diligence, nor the impression that
public service is being exploited for private profit
at a time when many families are enduring severe
economic hardship. Mr Johnson’s government is
beginning to give that impression rather too often.
In recent months it has demanded enormous
sacrifice of the public. The least it should offer in
return is transparency.It was not always thus. Rather, gout was
commonly an affliction of the wealthy. The
quintessential sufferer from gout was Shake-
speare’s generously proportioned protagonist Sir
John Falstaff, who laments in Henry IV, Part 2: “A
pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one
or the other plays the rogue with my great toe.” His
condition is clearly connected with a predilection
for sack, a fortified wine made with copious
amounts of sugar that was popular in Tudor and
Jacobean England. And men (almost always men)
who enjoyed a diet of game, rich sauces, sugar and
alcohol have long been susceptible.Samuel Johnson wrote in 1783: “The gout has
within these four days come upon me with a
violence which I never experienced before. It made
me helpless as an infant.” It may have been that his
disposition to depression caused him to overeat.
Yet the effect caused him a pain of its own.
The historical association of indulgence and
excess with inflamed feet gave gout the reputation
of being the disease of kings. The American
humourist Ambrose Bierce defined it as “a physi-
cian’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient”.
It is no longer. Gout is an ailment of an affluent
society, and the pain it elicits is no laughing matter.Lebanon’s Ruins
The explosion in Beirut resulted from criminal negligence yet the state’s rulers have
long failed its people. Aid should be tied to economic reform and good governance
In its “Cedar Revolution” of 2005, Lebanon briefly
held out the promise of peaceful democratisation.
It was a noble venture but it failed. The country
was already mired in multiple crises when a
colossal blast in Beirut on Tuesday killed at least
135 people and wounded thousands more. An
immense cache of confiscated ammonium nitrate
stored at a warehouse at the port is thought to
have been ignited indirectly by a spark from a
welder’s torch. The fact that such lethal material
was kept close to homes and offices, and remained
there for six years, is a microcosm of the
governance of a failing state in a turbulent region.
The risk that, amid this tragedy, Lebanon will
spiral further into crisis and conflict is intense. It
badly needs external economic support, for which
it requires stable government. And a resolution of
its predicament is made harder by the malign
activities of the Shia militia Hezbollah.
The destructiveness of the explosion bears
comparison with blanket bombing in aerial
warfare. A blast and fire were followed by a second
explosion, which generated a fireball and sent
a mushroom cloud billowing over Beirut. The
noise was heard in Cyprus, 145 miles across the
Mediterranean, and has left hundreds of thousands
homeless. The combustible material, used inIll-Equipped
Ministers must account for money wasted on substandard protective equipment
When Boris Johnson first implored the public to
stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives, many
doctors, nurses and carers lacked the provisions to
protect themselves from coronavirus. Shortages
of personal protective equipment (PPE) not only
put key workers at risk but allowed the pandemic
to take root in hospital wards and care homes
with alarming speed. Some hospitals were forced
to fashion makeshift gowns from binbags. When
there is a public inquiry these basic failures
properly to resource the NHS will be savaged.
While there was little to commend about its
immediate response to the pandemic, to blame the
government alone for initial difficulties in sourcing
PPE is unfair. Ministers cannot be blamed for a
global crisis of supply. Nor are they responsible for
increased costs. At the peak of the pandemic, no
price was too high if it stemmed the outbreak and
prevented further deaths. And some degree of
waste is inevitable when the blunt force of the state
is deployed to make bulk purchases quickly.
In the context such charges are minor. To haul
ministers over the coals for costs incurred doing
the right thing at a time of national crisis isDemocratic Disease
The easy availability of rich food is causing a resurgence in cases of gout
The first sign of arthritis is generally a sensation of
pain. Gout is an inflammatory arthritis, usually
starting in the big toe, that is especially painful. It
is caused by a build-up of uric acid, with swelling
of the joints. It has such a long pedigree in
biography and literature that it is tempting to
infer that it is a malady of purely historical interest.
Not so: a new study finds that the incidence of gout
across the world rose between 1990 and 2017. The
group of the population that is most at risk is
middle-aged men. The reason is not mysterious:
gout goes with gourmandism, and more people
now are able to afford rich food and drink.UK: The Bank of England’s monetary
policy committee announces its latest
interest rate decision; the V&A Museum in
west London begins a phased reopening.
During the sunny,
dry days of the
lockdown, bridleway
oak saplings hardly
grew. Without
regular watering,
they would have
died. For the past few rainy weeks the same
young trees have flourished. Instead of being
lush green, the new leaves are red, like the
rosy waves of Galactic lettuce. Not an
unseasonable sign of autumn, this striking
pigmentation is quite common in young
plants. Red leaves are thought to be less
attractive to munching herbivores and
insects. They may also protect trees against
disease and the harmful effects of strong
sunlight. Oak sprigs growing at this time of
year, whether red or green, are known as
Lammas leaves. jonathan tulloch
In 1996 Nasa announced that a primitive
form of microscopic life may have existed on
Mars more than 3.6 billion years ago.
Dame Barbara Windsor,
pictured, actress, Carry
On Camping (1969), and
EastEnders (1994-2003,
2005-10, 2013-16), 83; Sir
Jonathan Baker, lord
justice of appeal, 65;
Richard Baker,
chairman, Whitbread (2014-18) and British
Retail Consortium (2016-18), chief executive,
Boots (2003-07), 58; Lord (Guy) Black of
Brentwood, deputy chairman, Telegraph
Media Group, 56; Sir Chris Bonington,
mountaineer, made the first British ascent of
the North Wall of the Eiger (1962), 86; Billy
Boston, rugby player, member of the team
that won the 1960 rugby league World Cup,
86; Maria Caulfield, Conservative MP for
Lewes, assistant whip, 47; Sir Ian Cheshire,
chairman, Barclays Bank UK, Debenhams
(2016-19), chief executive, Kingfisher (2008-
15), 61; Vice-Admiral Sir Ian Corder,
lieutenant-governor of Guernsey, UK
military representative to Nato (2013-16), 60;
Mary Davis, chief executive, Special
Olympics, 66; Michael Deeley, film
producer, The Italian Job (1969), 88; Bill
Emmott, editor-in-chief, The Economist
(1993-2006), 64; Romola Garai, actress,
Vanity Fair (2004), 38; Joe Glanfield, sailor,
two-time Olympic silver medallist (2004,
2008), 41; Lord (Andrew) Green of
Deddington, founder (2001) and chairman,
MigrationWatch UK, 79; Geri Horner (née
Halliwell), singer, Spice Girls, Wannabe
(1996), 48; Prof Sir James Hough, physicist,
a leader in the field of gravitational wave
physics, 75; Max Lousada, chief executive of
recorded music, Warner Music Group, and
chairman and chief executive, Warner Music
UK, 47; Conor McPherson, playwright, The
Weir (1997), and director, 49; Richard
Prince, painter and photographer, 71; Chris
Sherwood, chief executive, RSPCA, Relate
(2015-18), 40; M Night Shyamalan, film
director, The Sixth Sense (1999), 50; Mary
Ann Sieghart, writer and broadcaster, 59;
Roger Weatherby, chief executive,
Weatherbys private bank, senior steward,
The Jockey Club (2014-19), 58; Michelle
Ye o h, actress, Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon (2000), 58.
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the
counting.” Tom Stoppard, playwright and
screenwriter, Jumpers (1972)
Nature notes
Birthdays today
On this day
The last word
Daily Universal Register