Database Management Systems (UE18CS180).Meanwhile, Toby and I are reviewing who should play the former secretary. Hopefully the good people there have developed nice strong antibodies to being pushed around by politicians. Thanks to the London Hippodrome, we now have a new venue. The bad news for the former health secretary is that despite his apparent triumph over the Emmanuel Centre, our event will go ahead. To his regret, he freely shared his WhatsApps with quite a few people, including me. Nice work if you can get it! Sadly, the South Korean company he thought he could assist turned out to be fake.Īs for the stolen thing? Within a few hours of the Telegraph breaking the Lockdown Files exposé, even he dropped that ridiculous claim. It turns out he pocketed £320,000 from his appearance – of which he donated just £10,000 to charity.Īs if that was not enough to disqualify him from lecturing anyone about making money, he recently told an undercover reporter that his going rate for providing business advice is £10,000 a day, or “around £1,500 an hour”. He told everyone his stint on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity show was all about raising awareness of dyslexia, but few were convinced. This is, after all, a man who summarily dumped his constituents in West Suffolk to prance around the Australian jungle getting ants in his pants and eating camel bits. That the former health secretary could see fit to adopt the moral high ground when it comes to money making of any description is a fresh reminder of his brass neck. Understandably, management felt they had better things to do with their time than dodge any more grapeshot from the Hancock bunker, so they caved. What I understand the former health secretary’s team actually told the Emmanuel Centre however, was that they should not be “profiting from “stolen material” – insinuating some form of criminality. Fox – a fierce lockdown critic - was an obvious choice. As part of the evening’s entertainment, Toby and I had planned to use actors to bring some of the more explosive WhatsApp exchanges to life. Perhaps it was the thought of being played by Laurence Fox – a man he despises - that tipped Hancock over the edge. Doubtless they were told it was for their own good. In a routine they perfected during the pandemic, his “people” appear to have made folk at the Emmanuel Centre feel as if dreadful things would happen if they did not do what Hancock seems to have wanted them to do: namely, pull the plug on our event. Swiftly reverting to type, it sounds very much as if he decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to attempt to frighten the pants off people, deploying the highly toxic variant otherwise known as his team to start issuing veiled threats. Still seething about the release of more than 100,000 of his WhatsApp messages to the Telegraph, apparently he could not stand the idea of this event.

One person who seemed not best pleased, however, was Mr Hancock. When Toby Young and I first asked if we could use the venue for a ticketed event about the Lockdown Files, they seemed more than happy to oblige. Only recently, management did something Hancock would have hated, allowing the space to be used for the screening of a film highlighting Covid vaccine harms. The listed building in the heart of Westminster is a popular place for all sorts of events. Nonetheless, managers at the venue emphasise that they “continue to take precautions” – which seem to include continuing to listen to Matt Hancock.

After lockdown, the Emmanuel Centre declared that it was delighted to be back in the business of hosting large-scale events.

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