Stand down: the government has not awarded a tiny, unknown Cornish company a £70 billion contract to oversee the entire implementation of Net Zero. Only those who don’t bother to read more than two sentences of any article covering it would think that. Case in point: Jolyon Maugham, who whipped up a social media storm over this story in Cornwall Live last night, headlined “Small company from Cornwall to oversee huge £70 billion Net Zero contract“. “Surely this can’t be true? Surely?”, he tweeted. It isn’t.

The truth is far more boring, and far less worthy of rallying the troops for another pointless judicial review. The £70 billion figure comes from East of England Broadband Network (E2BN), a not-for-profit consortium run in part by local councils, who have predicted the total value of their plan to advise parts of the public sector on the Net Zero transition will – somehow – amount to £70 billion over its lifetime. The contract was listed on Contracts Finder so they could find a supplier to help with the legwork. That’s that…

Hat-tip: Matt Honeycombe-Foster

UPDATE: On cue, Jolyon has put his lawyers on the case anyway:

“I put these questions to Simon [E2BN chief] and couldn’t get answers that moved beyond him explaining what a great company he ran. In the circumstances, [the Good Law Project] has instructed lawyers to draft and send a letter to E2BN…”

He also reminds everyone to send the Good Law Project more money. Every day is groundhog day.