NADHIM ZAHAWI - BJ'S CIRCUS CLOWNS

  CABINET RESHUFFLE SEPTEMBER 2021

Please use our A-Z INDEX to navigate this site

Nadhim Zahawi - Education Secretary - Nadhim Zahawi has been promoted to education secretary, replacing Gavin Williamson.
He was previously a business minister and minister for vaccines. Mr Zahawi was elected as Conservative MP for Stratford-on-Avon in May 2010. Prior to his career as an MP, he co-founded the market research firm YouGov.

According to the Daily Mail, cabinet minister Nahim Zahawi faces fresh questions over expenses loophole for outside income(s) in November 2021, after using a legal loophole to shield his total earnings.

The Education Secretary earned more than £1.3 million from a role with Bermuda-listed Gulf Keystone from 2015 until he became a minister.

But his total income from second jobs since becoming an MP in 2010 is unknown because he funnelled it through a consultancy firm, Zahawi and Zahawi, which he set up with wife Lana before being elected MP for Stratford in 2010.

There is no suggestion any rules or laws have been broken. But Sir Alistair Graham, a former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, told the Mirror: 'This could be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to get around the rules so that he doesn't have to admit the scale of his earnings in a consultant capacity.

'The important thing to stress is that MPs have their personal responsibility to ensure that they comply not only with the letter but the spirit of the code of conduct.

'Constituents have a right to know how much time and money he is taking separate to his political work.'

Mr Zahawi, the Iraq-born founder of YouGov, was appointed chief strategy officer at Gulf Keystone Petroleum in 2015 and reported outside earnings which were the equivalent of an annual salary of £765,000. 

He received a salary of £20,125 a month, for working between eight and 21 hours per week. 

In addition to that, he received a string of bonuses between January and June 2016, adding up to £78,246.38, plus a payment of £52,325 made in September 2015 for 210 hours work, backdated to July last year.

He resigned after being made Minister for Children and Families. This year he replaced Gavin Williamson as Education Secretary after being vaccines minister.

Previously, Zahawi acted as an adviser to Afren, another oil company that went under in 2015 

Born in Baghdad to Kurdish parents in 1967, Zahawi left Iraq with his family as a nine-year-old boy, under threat of persecution from Saddam Hussein's regime.

He grew up in Sussex and was educated in London. Before entering Parliament, he was an entrepreneur: an early venture, selling Teletubbies clothing, went under and backers including former Tory grandee Jeffrey Archer, lost their stakes.

Zahawi went on to act as an aide to Archer and to co-found YouGov with Stephan Shakespeare, another of the disgraced Tory peer's lieutenants.

The pair were reported to each have holdings worth £5.7million in YouGov when it floated on AIM in 2005.

TRANSPARENCY - It is unclear if having a cabinet position in any capacity, removes the possibility of influencing the decisions of other cabinet ministers, on for example oil, concerning MP Nadhim Zahawi. Or, if they should leave any meeting where past employment, or present consultancies present a conflict of interest. Citizens have a duty to look out for possible corruption,  past and in the making, or violations of the parliamentary Code of Conduct. Records of meetings should be maintained and routinely cross referenced with a comprehensive database, preferably digitally, with continuous monitoring of income, assets and bank accounts - to prevent money laundering and misfeasance in public office.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson carried out a reshuffle of his 24 cabinet members on Wednesday (15 September 2021), removing several key ministers.

This is the second major reshuffle since Mr Johnson became leader of the Conservative party and took over as prime minister from Theresa May in July 2019. The last one took place in February 2020. But can any amount of shuffling within a party with tunnel vision, cure their toxic policies?

Some of the big moves included Liz Truss to foreign secretary, the Tories' first woman in that role; Nadhim Zahawi moved from leading the vaccine rollout to education - at the expense of Gavin Williamson; and Nadine Dorries stepped up from health minister to culture secretary.

Who's in the other posts? Below is a guide to the people that make up Mr Johnson's cabinet, with the latest new faces. The burning question is, will it make any difference to Britain's performance on the world climate stage. Or will they be feathering their nests and fiddling on their violins, while the planet burns?

Following the abysmal result from COP26, all that can be said is, the cabinet need to scratch their heads a little more, stop taking second jobs - that deprives their constituents of MP time, or time that should be spent thinking on COP27 (set for Egypt) and saving lives. And of course, developing a sustainable economy.

Apart from the rather misguided denials from China, USA, India, Russia and Australia, COP26 did give us reductions on forest felling, and at least the mention of fossil fuels in the approved text.

Accordingly, the countries assume commitments to build up efforts for reduction of energy consumption based on unabated coal and abandonment of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

Nearly 200 countries have made an unprecedented and historic pledge to speed up the end of fossil fuel subsidies and coal at the COP26 climate summit, where India pushed through an 11th hour intervention to weaken the language on coal. So nailing their colours to the mast.

Crucially, despite almost a fortnight’s negotiations that ran more than 24 hours late, the 196 countries meeting in Glasgow committed to issuing stronger 2030 climate plans next year in a bid to avert dangerous global warming.

Pledges at COP26 are expected to see Earth warm 2.4°C this century, better than the predicted 2.7°C predicted before the summit but still a rise that would bring extreme climate impacts and see countries overshoot their shared goals of 1.5°C and “well below” 2°C.

The promise to “revisit and strengthen” new plans by the end of 2022 means the UK government hosting the summit can credibly claim to have delivered its aim of “keeping alive” the 1.5°C target. “It is a big moment,” says Chris Stark of the Climate Change Committee, an independent group that advises the UK government.

Fresh plans submitted next year for curbing emissions in 2030 must be aligned with the 1.5°C goal, an important new requirement that means those governments who fall short will have to justify why to their citizens. Australia, Brazil and Indonesia are among many countries whose existing plans are inadequate and will need to be strengthened.

Until today, coal and fossil fuel subsidies have never been explicitly mentioned in 26 years of treaties and decisions at UN climate talks, despite coal being one of the key drivers of global warming and $5.9 trillion of subsidies being given annually to coal, oil and gas.

The language in COP26’s final decision text, now known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, sees countries agree to “accelerating efforts” on the phase-out of “inefficient” subsidies. In a dramatic last-minute intervention, minutes before the outcome was adopted, India proposed a watered-down version of the language on coal, changing “phasing down” of coal rather than “phasing out.”

THE DIRTIEST DOZEN G20 - COAL, GAS & OIL GUZZLERS - COP OUTS.

G20 abusers will say they had no choice. They needed to keep burning coal, gas and oil for their economies - just like the camp guards at the many concentration camps in WWII, they were forced into business as usual. In the case of the camp guards, they argued they were just following orders. But that is not true. We all have choices. There are clean alternatives, such as solar and wind power. There is no need to keep building coal fired electricity generating stations, and no need to drive carcinogenic petrol or diesel vehicles that contribute to between 7-8 million deaths a year from lung cancer. We have hydrogen fuel cells, electrolyzers and zero emission electric vehicles.

If you are going to increase electricity capacity, it makes sense to invest in renewable energy, unless it is that the fossil fuel giants are lubricating the works with party donations. If that is the case, we say that such contributions should be transparently declared, that the public is informed as to what is guiding policy decisions.

LINKS & REFERENCE

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2021/11/sleaze-tory-doesnt-speak.html
https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/07/bozo-clown-pointless-politican.html
http://www.climatecriminals.co.uk/

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/zahawi-faces-fresh-questions-over-expenses-loophole-for-outside-income/ar-AAQIQ1X?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/zahawi-faces-fresh-questions-over-expenses-loophole-for-outside-income/ar-AAQIQ1X?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2021/11/sleaze-tory-doesnt-speak.html
https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/07/bozo-clown-pointless-politican.html
http://www.climatecriminals.co.uk/


Note: BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) is a term widely used in the UK to describe people of non-white descent, as defined by the Institute of Race Relations.

The make-up of the cabinet has also changed with all the comings and goings. There are two more women then there had been before the reshuffle, but the proportion has stayed about the same because the overall number of people attending cabinet has also increased slightly.

As for the education of those now in cabinet, about 63% of them went to private schools, down slightly when compared to Mr Johnson's previous reshuffle last year - but still a stark contrast to his predecessor's. Just 30% of Theresa May's first cabinet in 2016 attended independent schools, which was fewer than both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's original cabinets.

According to the Sutton Trust social mobility charity, every prime minister since 1937 who attended university was educated at Oxford - except for Mr Brown. At 43%, Mr Johnson's new cabinet has slightly fewer members who were educated at Oxford or Cambridge compared to his last reshuffle - but it's still more than double what is was in Tony Blair's first cabinet in 1997.

It is no fault of Bozo, that Australia, China, India, Russia and USA have refused to cease using coal in the near future (2030- 2040), but they did sign the Glasgow Climate Pact.

Those countries with geriatric fossil fool policies are too entrenched in carcinogenic fuels to save around two hundred and forty 240,000,000 million lives from 2030 to 2050. This figure is based on current death statistics from lung cancer and related respiratory diseases, that are likely to rise as earth's temperature increases. This does not include projected deaths from heat stroke, starvation, thirst and displacement. 

 This website is provided on a free basis as a public information service. copyright © Climate Change Trust 2021. Solar Studios, BN271RF, United Kingdom.