The UK response - Part II - read OP

4068ac1elhodqr

Many of the MP types seem to have lost the plot, or are operating from their own limited bounds of reality.

From midnight trains to anywhere (while coviddy), the HoC bar not needing to abide by the 10pm rule, Boris's old lad in the shop without any whiff of a mask, now Hancock comes out and says VitD is no good for the flu. Best not ask what Patel is planning... Papa New Guinea is one hell of a tow for a dingy, and some tribes there are cannibals, welcoming of any new meat and greating of strangers.

Edward Important Minefield

Edward Important Minefield wrote: »

Many of the MP types seem to have lost the plot, or are operating from their own limited bounds of reality.

From midnight trains to anywhere (while coviddy), the HoC bar not needing to abide by the 10pm rule, Boris's old lad in the shop without any whiff of a mask, now Hancock comes out and says VitD is no good for the flu. Best not ask what Patel is planning... Papa New Guinea is one hell of a tow for a dingy, and some tribes there are cannibals, welcoming of any new meat and greating of strangers.

“Must.deflect”

theological

Aegir wrote: »

“Must.deflect”

Particularly when the MP is an opposition MP.

Admittedly, I'm pretty disappointed in the government response in numerous aspects at this stage.

I still don't know why they don't just restrict overseas travel entirely until the caseload is significantly reduced. This should have happened in the summer. It is silly having yet another race from Poland and Turkey before Saturday morning.

It is probably also time to bring in restrictions on meeting in households.

nacho libre

theological wrote: »

I still don't know why they don't just restrict overseas travel entirely until the caseload is significantly reduced. This should have happened in the summer. It is silly having yet another race from Poland and Turkey before Saturday morning.

It is probably also time to bring in restrictions on meeting in households.

It's not going to happen because of the economic impact of doing so.
There is already revolt in the Tory Party over tightening restrictions as it is. Sunak seems to be gaining more and more influence on policy. He has already vetoed a two week national lockdown

Joe_ Public

Interesting that all these tory libertarians should be finding a voice against the restrictions now, complaining that the government has been using too much of its special powers to infringe their civil liberties. Yet, all the time the government was using these exact same powers to funnel 100s of millions to private sector companies in often bizarre circumstances, not as much as a peep from all these brave rebels about it. And the grim irony is, of course, that it is in no small part due to the bungling of several of these private operators that they are facing the prospect of even tighter restrictions in many areas across the country.

gmisk

Boris Johnson usual car crash this morning on Andrew Marr.

“Act fearlessly but with common sense” he said. Now at least people knoe what to do. Phew!

Marr asked him how his recovery was going, which led to further choice quotes - ‘I’m fitter than 3 butcher’s dogs’. ‘We’re one of the greatest countries on earth but we’re too fat. Only the Maltese are fatter’ and ‘the Union is one of the greatest achievements of this country’ (surely several countries..?)

lainey_d_123

gmisk wrote: »

Boris Johnson usual car crash this morning on Andrew Marr.

“Act fearlessly but with common sense” he said. Now at least people knoe what to do. Phew!

Marr asked him how his recovery was going, which led to further choice quotes - ‘I’m fitter than 3 butcher’s dogs’. ‘We’re one of the greatest countries on earth but we’re too fat. Only the Maltese are fatter’ and ‘the Union is one of the greatest achievements of this country’ (surely several countries..?)

It's an absolute train wreck. I didn't like May at all but at least she wasn't as thick as pig sh1t. We are so, so unlucky to have this idiot as our leader.

A Dub in Glasgo

The UK govt are basically lying through their teeth about the case numbers in England. They wait until the latter part of a Sunday evening when the media news is generally finished and the newspapers headlines are done to release this kind of nonsense

https://twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/status/1312852754147180548

https://twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/status/1312854261630480390

gmisk

Oops....we lost 16 thousand cases due to an IT glitch..

Nearly 16,000 coronavirus cases missed in daily figures for England after IT error
https://t.co/AJ0FV8teI4


What...the...actual...****!

Enzokk

gmisk wrote: »

Oops....we lost 16 thousand cases due to an IT glitch..

Nearly 16,000 coronavirus cases missed in daily figures for England after IT error
https://t.co/AJ0FV8teI4


What...the...actual...****!

IT error or spreadsheet error?

https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1313048545549848582?s=20

PommieBast

lainey_d_123 wrote: »

It's an absolute train wreck. I didn't like May at all but at least she wasn't as thick as pig sh1t. We are so, so unlucky to have this idiot as our leader.

In all ironies I think Covid, which really needs technocratic leadership over style, would have actually suited May quite well.

gmisk

Enzokk wrote: »

IT error or spreadsheet error?

https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1313048545549848582?s=20

Jesus this whole thing is built on excel spreadsheets?!?

Joe_ Public

Banner headline on bbc screen right now: "NHS [should read Serco] test and trace currently working through the backlog."

Tracing contacts now. Is there even any point?

Harriet Baldwin, Tory mp, defending the government is car crash level. They are "ramping up" so f... ups are par for the course presumably. And any council can set up their own system if they want, she says dismissively, neglecting the reality they have been starved of funds and deloitte/serco have been using their position to try and extract even more profit from them.

Very clearly they've lost control, or never really had it to begin with. And they're not alone in having big problems, only fair to say. A couple of weeks back, Johnson had people over from Sweden to advise as well as those oxford professors - heneghan, gupta etc - who had been advocating herd immunity strategies as far back as March.

No disrespect to Sweden, but ive thought for months why dont they have people over from South Korea or other Asian countries where they managed to suppress or contain without, in many cases, punitive lockdowns. Are we in the west too proud to think there are maybe some valuable lessons we could have taken from them, even african countries where they have been tackling deadly infectious disease for decades, often with very limited resources.

I dont know, just idle thoughts. The lack of any leadership or example from the US at this time has been catastrophic.

serfboard

gmisk wrote: »

Jesus this whole thing is built on excel spreadsheets?!?

From my reading, the system outputs the results to Excel, and this is where the loss occurred.

Peregrinus

Which tell us that the government whose ambition it is to turn the UK into a tech superpower (a) uses Excel and (b) doesn't understand how Excel works.

S.M.B.

Tells us this is what happens when you go running to Deloitte and they come up with a solution that is basically held together with sticky tape.

Another big black mark against the decision to create an entirely new infrastructure for Pillar 2 testing rather than just looking to upscale the existing system and processes already in place.

We wouldn't need to worry about batch importing pillar 2 test data into PHE systems via excel if they just used the pre-existing software to begin with.

S.M.B.

S.M.B. wrote: »

Tells us this is what happens when you go running to Deloitte and they come up with a solution that is basically held together with sticky tape.

Another big black mark against the decision to create an entirely new infrastructure for Pillar 2 testing rather than just looking to upscale the existing system and processes already in place.

We wouldn't need to worry about batch importing pillar 2 test data into PHE systems via excel if they just used the pre-existing software to begin with.

From what Hancock said in the commons, it sounds like this was legacy PHE software that is now being upgraded.

bob mcbob

Aegir wrote: »

From what Hancock said in the commons, it sounds like this was legacy PHE software that is now being upgraded.

Surely any process (especially one run by accountants) would have a verification check in place to say that the numbers exported from one system were correctly imported into the second system.

This is not rocket science, it is basic stuff but apparently that is beyond their capabilities.

Joe_ Public

I see Rishi Sunak taking some flak for apparently suggesting to ITV that musicians and other artists would just have to go and retrain for other jobs like others. ITV actually deleted the tweet so am guessing the government is disputing that interpretation and haven't seen the original interview. Either way, as a guy heavily touted to be next tory leader, or even pm, Sunaks dealings with the arts sector haven't struck me as being particularly smart or savvy.

Joe_ Public

Think Angela Rayner was on the mark in calling for Hancock to consider his position earlier. Should really have happened months ago imo. But Starmer hasn't backed up his deputy in an interview on sky just there, just merely telling the health minister to get on with it. I dunno but I think that is weak from the labour leader, almost like he's afraid of getting too tough on this government's sustained incompetence.

nacho libre

Joe_ Public wrote: »

Think Angela Rayner was on the mark in calling for Hancock to consider his position earlier. Should really have happened months ago imo. But Starmer hasn't backed up his deputy in an interview on sky just there, just merely telling the health minister to get on with it. I dunno but I think that is weak from the labour leader, almost like he's afraid of getting too tough on this government's sustained incompetence.

It might be that Starmer is above party politics, that he does not want to seen to engage in political opportunism in a time of crisis. You can be sure if Labour were in power, the conservative leader would not show such reluctance.

nacho libre

nacho libre wrote: »

It might be that Starmer is above party politics, that he does not want to seen to engage in political opportunism in a time of crisis. You can be sure if Labour were in power, the conservative leader would not show such reluctance.

It’s because Starmer is intelligent enough to realise a lot of the criticism is just childish tabloid stuff.

bob mcbob

bob mcbob wrote: »

Surely any process (especially one run by accountants) would have a verification check in place to say that the numbers exported from one system were correctly imported into the second system.

This is not rocket science, it is basic stuff but apparently that is beyond their capabilities.

Yes, they should have done.

I don’t see what that has to do with my comment though.

S.M.B.

Aegir wrote: »

From what Hancock said in the commons, it sounds like this was legacy PHE software that is now being upgraded.

Was this today? Because that's not my understanding of what happened. Sky news went into it in great detail last night but I'm not sure where they got their information from. I (maybe wrongly?) assumed it was true and verified.

The issue outlined was that Tier 2 data needs to be inputted into PHEs system for processing. The method of doing so uses a single excel spreadsheet upload which is a flimsy and extremely risky solution. I'm pretty stunned with how amateurish an approach it is. Now I get that the PHE system probably isn't very modern and would take effort to integrate with but that's even more reason to not go down the route that requires a separate entity to have to do so. Scale up existing systems rather than develop new ones with integration challenges.

S.M.B.

S.M.B. wrote: »

Was this today? Because that's not my understanding of what happened. Sky news went into it in great detail last night but I'm not sure where they got their information from. I (maybe wrongly?) assumed it was true and verified.

The issue outlined was that Tier 2 data needs to be inputted into PHEs system for processing. The method of doing so uses a single excel spreadsheet upload which is a flimsy and extremely risky solution. I'm pretty stunned with how amateurish an approach it is. Now I get that the PHE system probably isn't very modern and would take effort to integrate with but that's even more reason to not go down the route that requires a separate entity to have to do so. Scale up existing systems rather than develop new ones with integration challenges.

Hancock was asked yesterday in the commons. He obviously didn’t go in to detail.

My take on it all though is that it is the PHE system that is at fault and it didn’t matter if 20,000 nurses all working for the NHS were doing it, it was still the PHE system that was the weak link.

It’s a schoolboy error though and shouldn’t have happened.

S.M.B.

Aegir wrote: »

Hancock was asked yesterday in the commons. He obviously didn’t go in to detail.

My take on it all though is that it is the PHE system that is at fault and it didn’t matter if 20,000 nurses all working for the NHS were doing it, it was still the PHE system that was the weak link.

It’s a schoolboy error though and shouldn’t have happened.

I disagree. It's the PHE's solution for collating data from these commercial operators that was at fault. If there were no external commercial operators there would have been no need to implement a flawed solution.

Doesn't sound like we're going to come to any mutual opinion on this though so I'm happy to just park it there and move on.

BoatMad

Was in the U.K., much better organised at the pub and restaurant level , QR code based contact details everywhere masks absolutely everywhere very disciplined

beggars_bush

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54432916

ouch

Up to 60% of emergency pandemic loans made under the Bounce Back scheme may never be repaid, a report by the government's spending watchdog says.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said taxpayers could lose as much as £26bn, from fraud, organised crime or default.

nacho libre

Aegir wrote: »

It’s because Starmer is intelligent enough to realise a lot of the criticism is just childish tabloid stuff.

Yes, you are probably right. Boris could learn a lot from him.

serfboard

S.M.B. wrote: »

The issue outlined was that Tier 2 data needs to be inputted into PHEs system for processing. The method of doing so uses a single excel spreadsheet upload which is a flimsy and extremely risky solution. I'm pretty stunned with how amateurish an approach it is. Now I get that the PHE system probably isn't very modern and would take effort to integrate with but that's even more reason to not go down the route that requires a separate entity to have to do so. Scale up existing systems rather than develop new ones with integration challenges.

There's a lot of flaky software in use in all sorts of situations.

Fortunately, the consequnces aren't as important as they were in this case, but the fact that the software was flaky does not surprise me one bit.