THE BIG RETORT

Photo: Mark Harrison The United Kingdom is in tight lockdown. However, whilst the nation inches towards struggle street, are the Queen's ministers secretly being 'groomed' in the sacred salons of Westminster' ?    TheBigRetort... F ollowing  the Covid-19 pandemic,  Prime Minister  Boris Johnson advised against all “non-essential” travel.  The pub, the clubs, and even - God forbid - the hairdresser came under BoJo's it's a no-no 'thingy me bob'.  A week later the whole country was ordered into a lockdown described as  so ‘hair' tight it  even covered hairdressers.    It seemed to many that hairdressers should not have been placed out of bounds. If the country were to die from a thousand cuts  economically...  this was a cut too deep.  Yes there was anger. Confusion even... W hy were some among the flock allowed to work and others not? Nevertheless barbers were on "the list".  And wea...

The search for the identity of the first person to come into contact with Covid-19 is fruitless... at least for journalists with a "patient zero" in mind.   TheBigRetort A Canadian who died in 1984 was believed to be the first person to introduce AIDS into America and the wider world. But it later transpired that he was not patient zero. Earlier cases dated back to the '70s - by  which time the victim's reputation was tarnished beyond the grave. Similarly the search to find the Covid-19 patient zero lies in that same world. It's in this tiny devastating  domain - where the occupants speak a language few can interpret - where another patient zero will be found. And w hilst it seems possible that the outbreak of Covid-19 may have silently taken place before it made its appearance in a seafood market in Wuhan, it will not be any journalist who tracks down patient zero. That's because any person deemed to be misidentified 'the first' s...

[Image from Daily Mail.] Could a blocked 2016 Google Street View of the Skripal home lead to doorstep assassins? TheBigRetort A click on Google Street View records a picture of the Sergei Skripal home captured in April 2009.  But when you use the Google viewer and turn around to leave the house - and proceed down the street - the image capture flashes forward... to 2016. The property can only be viewed in the 2016 capture at a distance... before jumping back to 2009 as the viewer approaches the house, and a closer view of the property. Attempts to reverse the process and turn back towards the house jump from 2016 back... to 2009. So it isn't actually possible to get that close to the property at the time Skripal was living there. But why did Street View not film that portion of the street in 2016 – whilst filming the rest? Instead, the driver seems to have done a quick U-turn. Apparently some sensitive areas are removed from Street View by...

Leaseholders and taxpayers in London have been hoodwinked into paying thousands of pounds for fire-safety measures that are 'not to the necessary standard'. According to details contained in board minutes of Lewisham Homes at least. A discovery that may see the arms-length management organisation in the dock...again.   TheBigRetort exclusive. In my last post I reported that Andrew Potter CEO of Lewisham Homes was due to decamp to greener pastures at Hastoe Housing Association. Meanwhile... back in concrete city, board papers dated August 2017 reveal that six thousand two hundred composite fire-safety doors recently installed into properties managed by his former south-east London Almo may not be up to the necessary fire safety standard . The shock finding, unearthed by TheBigRetort,  follows threats by Lewisham Homes to prosecute leaseholders if they do not change their own flat entrance doors - which the managing agent has “deemed” unsafe....

Doddy with wife Anne in The Sun newspaper Your intrepid investigative reporter reveals the source of Doddy's Dosh and his missing millions.  It was during the Christmas period of 1980/81 at Birmingham's Alexandra theatre. The panto was Dick Whittington. The Big Retort encountered that master of merriment then simply Mister Ken Dodd playing Idle Jack. Also in the cast was Jeffrey Holland, who had recently climbed to fame as Spike in the hit BBC tv comedy series Hi-de- Hi. And of course, somewhat further down the celebrity line-up - in the various guises of Dream People, Sailors, and Moroccan Guards - yours truly.  TheBigRetort  looks back on the king of comedy's licence to print the millions that the tax man never got his hands on... and reveals where it eventually ended up.  The panto was a sell-out over its 6 week season. With matinees, the money going in and out of the cash tills was, I reckon,  in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pou...

This week we take a look at the CEO who turned a profit into a surplus at Lewisham Homes. THEBIGRETORT ... The Lewisham Homes Audit and Risk Committee minutes dated 20 June 2017 record that its board members were seemingly taxed... on the subject of profit. Auditors KPMG informed that it was common 'within the sector' to use surplus instead. However, ignoring the startling fact that board members, after hundreds of millions of pounds of public and leaseholder spend, and after eleven years of a spending - during which it did not know the correct Shamspeak - its members didn't realise that the term allows a not-for-profit organisation such as Lewisham Homes to, well... turn a profit into a surplus.  Accounts filed at Companies House record that this profit is due... 'primarily to a reduction in the valuation of projects undertaken' – and last year amounted to a cool £2.3 million.  That new roof that you leaseholders were informed need...