As the RMT Health and Safety Conference takes place, the union is calling for urgent action on crisis of work-related stress, understaffing and the growing threat of workplace assaults. RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY explains
According to a 2007 Times profile, Dido Harding was “known as an accomplished networker”. Since then Harding’s big breakthroughs, culminating in her key government Coronavirus role, came from people close to David Cameron. Harding went to Oxford with Cameron. In 1995 Harding married John Penrose, who became a Tory MP in 2005 and a junior Minister under Cameron in 2010.
Harding worked at management consultants McKinsey (where she met Penrose) and then at retail firms like Tesco. Her big leap came in 2010 when Harding was the “surprise” choice as Chief Executive of mobile and broadband firm Talk Talk.
Charles Dunstone was the billionaire behind Talk Talk backing Harding’s appointment: he was a former “New Labour”-supporting businessman, but switched allegiance to Cameron (who attended his 2009 wedding). Dunstone became a key member of Cameron’s “Chipping Norton Set.”
SOLOMON HUGHES details how the firm has quickly moved on to buttering-up Labour MPs after the fall of the Tories so it can continue to ‘win both ways’ collecting public and private cash by undermining the NHS



