***** This thread is now closed, please CLICK HERE to go to Volume 26 *****
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Ongoing debate.
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 16 Oct 20 at 11:00
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This is all a bit peculiar. Margaret Ferrier, an SNP MP, felt ill on Saturday and had a COVID test. She then said she felt better and travelled down to London by train.
She conducted a normal day's business in the House including a dinner. Monday evening she then got the result of her Saturday COVID test which was positive.
So she told colleagues that a family member was ill and travelled back up to Scotland by train.
It's not naive, it's dumb.
How did she think that was a reasonable course of action?
How did she think that it wouldn't become known?
I don't know whether she should quit for being stupid or quit for being irresponsible.
However, whichever reason she uses, she should remember her grandstanding demands that Cummings quit after his eye test.
www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-54383281
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Completely irresponsible. We rightly expect our leaders to set an example.
Cummings by comparison is not an elected politician. Nor did he put any lives at risk, bar his immediate family, by driving with possibly deficient vison.
You may not appreciate his personal qualities and even think Boris should have fired him. But by comparison it was but a trival and unconvincing breach of the rules compared to Mrs Ferrier. She is unworthy to represent our democracy and should go asap.
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>>Cummings by comparison is not an elected politician.
I'm not sure I follow the implied logic there. He is in a powerful and therefore very responsible position at the heart of government, and seems to be doing the job of a top civil servant, on what basis I'm not sure. Civil servants at almost every level have traditionally been held to high standards, if not of competence then at least of propriety - I even felt the weight of it in my brief period as a "Clerical Officer" in 1971!
Cummings IIRC even appointed himself to SAGE and, possibly uniquely, was a major functionary in both the advisory and political camps behind the anti-infection measures. Of course he should have got the boot - instead he was given the stage in the garden of 10 Downing Street. Rotten, rotten, rotten.
CGN - I wasn't taking comfort from the idea that only a decadent country could elect Trump and then keep him in office when the greatest and good-est people in the land had the opportunity to put things right. The decadence itself is surely a bigger problem than Trump? If it can happen there, could it not happen here?
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>>Cummings by comparison is not an elected politician
I don't have any particular problem with Cummings, but being elected is not really the point.
Irresponsibility and stupidity are the points. And he was irresponsible for not caring for the health of others and b***** stupid to do it in the public eye.
She should go for being stupid, irresponsible and hypocritical and he should have gone for being stupid and irresponsible.
The fact that one or other is elected should only matter insofar as who has the power to fire their a***.
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Re Cumming's son & Autism
I have a grandson with some attributes of Autism.
His dad, like most dad's who love their kids, will do anything to "look after" his son. He is now 12 and has had "issues" since say 2 years old.
The laddie is bright but only functions well when "his world is his normal" when things change and are "not normal" he crumbles. He attends an " after school class" 3 nights per week for counselling which is around $50 for 30 minutes - his dad also spends an hour or 2 every night helping him "- 3 years on he has shown marked improvements and can now cope much better than before although he can still have meltdowns but 1 every so often & not 3/4 days in a week when his mum has to pick him up from school - the fact that he is 3 years older might also help him.
Another son has a neighbour with a son with autism - this son is now 30+ - 1st in Astrophysics and an MSc in something. Unemployable other than as a part-time waiter in a hotel.
You cannot blame Dominic Cummings for doing the best for his son - his best on this occasion was not well thought out but in my mind understandable.
Ferrier woman - totally stupid.
Trump attending a fund raiser when a colleague had CV - mad - but then again he is mad.
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Mods, can we have a new volume, this one is getting hard work to follow.
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FB,
What makes you think Cummings was being truthful re his son?
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But if you think our politicians are bad..... (From Twitter)
: "Could Trump catching COVID-19 technically be viewed as an assassination attempt on our President by the Chinese?"
DeAnna Lorraine
You accomplished the tough task of being the dumbest motherfcker out here. Congrats.
Seth Rogen
www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/deanna-lorraine-says-trump-catching-covid-could-be-considered-an-assassination-attempt-by-china/03/10/
www.express.co.uk/news/world/1343389/donald-trump-latest-news-china-assassination-attempt-trump-health-update-deanna-lorraine
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 4 Oct 20 at 02:27
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>> "Could Trump catching COVID-19 technically be viewed as an assassination attempt on our President
>> by the Chinese?"
>>
>> DeAnna Lorraine
>>
>> You accomplished the tough task of being the dumbest motherfcker out here. Congrats.
>>
>> Seth Rogen
Jesus wept!
These people will have us in a shooting war if we are not careful.
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She also said;
"Does anyone else find it odd that no prominent Democrats have had the virus but the list of Republicans goes on and on?"
“It's pretty peculiar that the China Plague somehow knows to target only members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Of the 53 GOP Senators, the three that got the virus are all on the Committee. So coincidental....or not.”
"I'm just going to say what we're all thinking. Trump was fine until the debate, where they set up the microphone and podiums for him. Incubation period is usually 2 - 3 days. He tested positive a couple of days after the debate. I put nothing past the left. NOTHING."
Really, what are these people like? You have to hope it's just the gobby t***s with little else in their life other than a keyboard and stained pyjamas. Surely these cannot be the normal people???
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 4 Oct 20 at 05:41
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Jesus wept!
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>> These people will have us in a shooting war if we are not careful.
>>
I think we've been in plenty already.
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To be fair, she didn't win a seat at Congress so even the American people realised she is the dumbest motherfcker out here
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 4 Oct 20 at 09:16
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The best bit
she also claimed that it was odd that “no prominent Democrats have had the virus but the list of Republicans goes on and on”
It's so unlikely that anyone with sufficient support and resources to run for Congress could be so thick that I have to wonder whether she is knowingly spouting rubbish because she knows there are so many people ready to believe it.
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>>What makes you think Cummings was being truthful re his son?
With an autistic child anything could happen with the child.
Being looked after in a known house by known friends /relations is much much better than "local authority care" by strangers in a strange house.
LA care for a child - for any child scary - for an autistic child super super scary.
Do not underestimate the work needed to look after a child with autism - my grandson bright at Maths and many other areas - his autism is mild compared to many others. He is however, massively more difficult than his younger sister who is 2 years younger.
I have no knowledge of the level Cumming's son's autism.
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"Ferrier has claimed that the infection caused her to act “out of character” and she “panicked” before taking the train trip back to Scotland."
It would appear that she will not resign and is simply waiting to be forgotten.
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>>It would appear that she will not resign and is simply waiting to be forgotten.
I doubt she has the skillset to make £80k+ anywhere else so I'm not surprised.
Her interview last weekend, as reported at least (Sun on Sunday...), shows a significant lack of self-awareness other than high levels of self-pity.
www.thesun.co.uk/news/12898828/margaret-ferrier-mp-snp-coronavirus-blip-guidelines/
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>> Her interview last weekend, as reported at least (Sun on Sunday...), shows a significant lack of self-awareness other than high levels of self-pity.
And there in lies the problem. Probably four times what she’d earn elsewhere ;)
Yet, she hasn’t been subject to any fine at all. The three students in Cambridge however, who had a completely ill advised party for 100 people, were fined £10,000 each. And they hadn’t even tested positive!
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 15 Oct 20 at 10:46
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>> Yet, she hasn’t been subject to any fine at all.
Will not (or rather cannot) be charged; offence not in force at time of her test:
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/15/met-will-not-charge-mp-margaret-ferrier-for-travelling-with-covid
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I reckon she has got away with it.
Post number 169.
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Now, I am no fan of the protesters or their riots and destruction, but you'd have to say that this looks a bit extreme.
Watch the video, the text is in Spanish but you won't need it.
cooperativa.cl/noticias/pais/manifestaciones/video-muestra-que-joven-fue-empujado-por-carabinero-desde-el-puente-pio/2020-10-02/224758.html
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Just as a warning, there have been instances of people dressing up as a Carabinero and committing some outrage in the public eye.
There's no real way to tell other than the fact that one would have expected public accusations by now if that were the case.
Assuming that it is a real Carabinero, then it is clearly a very stupid one.
At this time of year the river is not particularly deep, though it is very fast moving. Since the kid that fell was taken to Clinica Santa Maria one would assume injured but not critical.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 4 Oct 20 at 06:16
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Sorry for the multiple posts.
This video would appear to make if pretty sure that it is a Carabinero running out of a group of Carabinero. They all have serial numbers on their helmets so he will be identified.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-j_KeZvTLU
It's a long b***** way down to a concrete bed river.
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>> And as the initial virus crisis passes, life in Chile begins to return to normal.
>>
>>
>> www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/03/chilean-police-throw-boy-16-off-bridge-during-protests
>>
What's the latest protest about?
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>>What's the latest protest about?
I genuinely don't know. They seem to have a bunch of things they hate rather than any quantifiable demands.
Police brutality
The Government
Education
Poverty
Minimum wage
Coronavirus
The Constitution
Facists or Communists (depending on the march)
Immigration
Oppression
Their main demand was always that the constitution should be changed. Though they don't seem quite sure in what way. But there is a full referendum on that in 3 weeks ish so you'd think they'd got what they want.
I just had a look at a few pictures of the riots, and there is nothing coherent in their signs and graffiti.
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I hadn't heard about this treatment, perhaps I wasn't paying attention.
Seems a bit rash to use an experimental treatment on the US President, I wonder how sick Trump actually is.
www.bbc.com/news/av/health-54401066
Last edited by: VxFan on Mon 5 Oct 20 at 12:46
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I think he is getting drugs that have been approved for other purposes rather than new drugs per se. On that basis it’s maybe not so rash but Lygonos might put me right on that one.
I was struck by the revelation on TV this morning that his doctors are only allowed to brief out what Trump has personally agreed they can say. Brings back memories of his dictating the doctor’s letter some time ago that said something to the effect that he was in perfect health.
Going back to the treatment, maybe Trump has insisted on getting the experimental approach.
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I'm not surprised that he manages what is reported, and "errs on the side of caution". I doubt that is unusual in similar situations anywhere in the world. He is the President after all, and probably has little confidence in even his own staff to spin the right line. There were, after all, two versions of how bad he was last Friday.
Last edited by: smokie on Mon 5 Oct 20 at 17:37
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He's a micro manager with an inadequate memory.
He tries to manage everything, isn't clever enough to do so, fails, but punishes any staff that try to fill the gaps, and bemoans everybody for making him do everything complaining all the while that nobody shows any initiative.
He reacts in the moment with no care as to what has been said or done before and no ability to imagine what may need to be said or done in the future.
He firmly believes what he says and attempts to surround himself with Electric Monks since, as his opinions do not stand up to logic or reason, he is unable to defend himself against doubters..
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"The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe"
Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency 1987ish
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>>I doubt that is unusual in similar situations anywhere in the world
It is not so much that he does it, rather the level of detail that he takes it to.
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For Trump it is all image management - although he regards as a simply statement of truths.
He cannot accept he is deficient in any respect - he has an almost childlke belief in all he utters.
He is brave, clever, honest, calls out fakery, and is convinced everybody loves and respects him. Or they get fired.
I would call him delusional. Republican politicians who backed him for a second term may now be regretting their stupidity - they will carry the stigma of his presidency for decades to come.
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It's not image management in the way that you would think. This is the fundamental difference between Johnson and Trump. (for which we should be thankful).
Johnson wants everybody to think he is great. Consequently he is always saying and doing things which he believes or hopes will make people think he is great. The type of image management form politicians that we are used to.
Trump has no interest in what other people think. He does and says what confirms to himself that he is great and marvellous. The image that Trump is trying to maintain is in his own mind. Everything Trump does or says is driven by what he wishes to show to himself as confirmation of his self-image.
Trump is not maintaining an image that is supposed to convince us, it is purely self-affirmation. Things that support his self-image get through, things that do not simply do not exist.
If you want to disrupt Trump you do not attack what others think of him, you attack his self image.
You'd think that the Democrats would have people that would understand this, even if they did not themselves.
But judging by their campaign, they do not.
Trump is the type of person that you could cause to explode in a debate. Explode in a way that he'd say stuff and behave in a way that would damage him. Biden, and presumably the team behind him, appear unable to think out of the box and continue to play the game the way that one would play it against an opponent who was decent and reasonable. Trump is neither.
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>> Republican politicians who backed him for a second term may now be regretting their stupidity
I'm not sure about that.
Politicians, of any stripe, want to be politicians in power more than anything else in the world. Supporting Trump kept them as politicians for 4 more years, perhaps 8. Had they fought him they would not have been politicians.
That's a success. For now. They'll worry about what's next when it happens.
Unless they'd acted as a group of course, but their idea of cooperation is more Lord of the Flies than any genuine group belief in what is correct.
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>> >> Republican politicians who backed him for a second term may now be regretting their
>> stupidity
>>
All depends on what sort of state they are in, in swing states they may well be trying to put clear water between them and him. In red states much less so.
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When it was reported that Trump was positive, a few days ago, there was quickly a video of him saying "oh, I'm fine, I'll be back in a couple of days".
I can't be the only one who thought "bet he filmed that a few weeks ago, to be played out in this circumstance."
Or have I joined the conspiracy theorists?
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>Or have I joined the conspiracy theorists?
Yes.
>>I can't be the only one who thought "bet he filmed that a few weeks ago, to be played out in this circumstance."
That's not the way Trump thinks. Though there is nothing to say that someone else in the White House didn't think that way.
However, the biggest argument against conspiracy theories in the US is that no b****** can keep a secret. They'll quickly trade 15 minutes for the secrecy of the confidential arrangement they were involved in.
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Nearly all conspiracy theories collapse when you consider how many people would have to know about it.
I agree with you that his self-congratulation and grandiosity is all for his own consumption and if he is the type I think I recognise, they lose all reason when you challenge the qualities they have awarded themselves. What sort of person keeps repeating that they are a stable genius?
Just showing them to be a liar doesn't worry them at all - they just ignore it, wave it off and deny it, say they meant something else, or that you must have misunderstood them.
It's very destructive to the people around him I should think. Just being around people like that means doing and saying things you know to be wrong.
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>> Prohibition comes to Scotland
>>
>> www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-scotland-54449573
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I wonder how many infected cases come from transmission from pubs, restaurants etc? I think the last figures I saw in England it was about 3%.
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I suspect that it is far higher than that and indeed Nicola Sturgeon cited the large number of infected persons that had visited licensed premises as one of the the reasons behind the move.
it is notable that the the large cities with big Saturday night drinking cultures such as Liverpool and Newcastle are badly hit by the virus. The probem is that those infected in pubs etc go home to infect the rest of their family.
The prospects for this winter do look grim
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>>The prospects for this winter do look grim
I'm not so sure. If it is grim, it will probably be politician & tabloid inflicted rather than virus inflicted.
Agreed that known cases are climbing. Whilst the figure is a very high number of *confirmed* cases there's somewhat more to it that that.
So far in the UK 24 million people have been tested, 550,000 have been found positive. Just over 2%, I think. That's not much.
14,000 were tested positive, which seems rather a lot, but I think the estimate at the peak (not much testing) was something like 100,000
Patients in hospital is currently at 3,100. In May it was 20,000.
70 people died yesterday from COVId-19, in May it was around 1,000 per day. Of the 545,000 confirmed with COVID, 42,000 have died. 7.5%. at it's height it was 14%. It is falling and continues to fall.
In August the UK had negative excess deaths. Suggesting that, nasty as it is on a personal level, on a national level CPOVId-19 was killing people who were going to die shortly anyway.
And, sadly, many of the very vulnerable have died. They can't die twice.
I took my figures from GOV.UK this morning.
We are not in the same scenario that we were in April / May and it should be treated differently.
Full lockdown is an unwise panic these days. The vulnerable and those who live or work with vulnerable people need to continue to be very careful. The rest, not so much. Employers need to be very considerate with the precautions that the vulnerable need to take. With the rest, not so much.
What good does it do preventing someone getting the virus if in fact it will be relatively mild and they will recover? Absolutely none at all. In fact it is counterproductive.
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“What good does it do preventing someone getting the virus if in fact it will be relatively mild and they will recover? Absolutely none at all. In fact it is counterproductive.”
Well none if they happen to only ever come into contact with those who will find an infection a minor affair. Unfortunately in the real world that is not the case. Young people live with their mums and dads. They see their Grandma, they mingle with vulnerable people in shops. Until a vaccine is available the only practical course available is to try and minimise the rate of infection and thus ensure the health service can cope.
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>>Until a vaccine is available the only practical course available is to try and minimise the rate of infection
"Stop your life dead or carry on as 'normal' except that you will have to isolate yourself for 14 days every time you want to see your Mother" is pretty much the decision isn't it?
As opposed to lockdown for everybody no matter what.
If it came to it I would happily manage without face to face contact with my daughters if it meant they could have uninterrupted education for a year.
>> thus ensure the health service can cope.
As near as I can tell from the official figures the health service is at about 10% of capacity insofar as hospitalised COVID-19 cases are concerned. So not quite panic stations yet, even if in reality it is double that.
Now is not the scenario that we had before.
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Infection levels in Scotland and parts of England look set to exceed the March infection peak by the end of the month. Hospitalisation and death rates will follow the same path unless the R rate can be lowered
Scotland seems to be mirroring the situation in France and Spain with a one month lag. The health care systems in both those countries are now under severe strain.
In all likelihood England will follow the same path. I expect stricter rule to be imposed soon.
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>>Infection levels in Scotland and parts of England look set to exceed the March infection peak by the end of the month.
Which figures are you comparing? Which parts of England?
What was the infection rate in March?
How many tests were done?
What was the infection rate in October?
How many tests were done
>> I expect stricter rule to be imposed soon.
So do I . I just don't blindly expect it to be the correct decision.
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I respect Sunetra Gupta. The proposal that the vulnerable should be protected while younger people to whom COVID poses a very low risk get on with life normally and infect each other is not new and makes complete sense as an option that should continuously be evaluated - there has to be a point at which it becomes optimal to do that.
The question is will it work now and can it be done prudently such that health services are not overwhelmed, It won't organise itself if Johnson or Cummings wake up one morning and decide it's the way to go and the cork will not easily go back in the bottle id it doesn't. Just how will the vulnerable be protected when COVID is prevalent among all the others? Just going into winter makes it very risky IMO and we could well end up choosing whether to treat sick COVID victims or provide life saving treatment for all the backed up people critically ill with cardiovascular disease and cancer.
It would be an experiment, not a strategy at the moment.
On a positive view, the IFR might be on its way down, perhaps driven by the demographic of the people now catching COVID, improvements in case management, and, frankly, the prior removal of 50,000 people who were most susceptible by dint of where they were and their medical histories. In a couple of months there will be much better data on that.
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>> On a positive view, the IFR might be on its way down, perhaps driven by
>> the demographic of the people now catching COVID, improvements in case management, and, frankly, the
>> prior removal of 50,000 people who were most susceptible by dint of where they were
>> and their medical histories. In a couple of months there will be much better data
>> on that.
You mean Covid has had the low hanging fruit?
That analogy had occurred to me too.
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In summer the number of positive tests per 1000 done (remembering these people all had ?Covid symptoms) was around 3-5.
Last week it was ~50.
This week over 80.
The fun is just beginning, as the cohorts being infected are the relatively mobile/fitter/younger population.
Just a matter of time until they give it to grandma or the oldies in the care home they work in I suspect.
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>>they mingle with vulnerable people in shops.
It would be more responsible for the vulnerable to take extreme precautions to protect themselves.
I do.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 7 Oct 20 at 19:40
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thus ensure the health service
>> can cope.
>>
But can people cope without the health service?
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> I think the last figures I saw in England it was about 3%.
"It’s wrong to say that only 3% of Covid-19 cases are caused by restaurants and pubs" - see FullFact: fullfact.org/health/its-wrong-to-say-that-only-3-of-covid-19-cases-are-caused-by-restaurants-and-pubs/
More likely over 10%, it seems, though precise figure is uncertain. Apparently the 3% figure was quoted in The Sun, Daily Star and Telegraph.
'Nuff said.
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>> I wonder how many infected cases come from transmission from pubs, restaurants etc? I think
>> the last figures I saw in England it was about 3%.
Oh no, must be much higher than that. Pubs can get crowded, inhibitions and precautions go out the window as the booze flows.
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Three times as many people have died from Covid-19 than from flu and pneumonia in England and Wales this year, according to official figures.
Between January and August 2020, there were 48,168 deaths due to Covid-19 compared to 13,500 from pneumonia. Only 394 were due to flu.
Deaths from flu have been particularly low this year.
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We all have heard that the testing centre's are chock-ablock and the labs can't cope etc etc, but if you go on Youtube and look at some of the "vids" that those so-called "Auditors" post about the Covid testing centre's you will see that apart from the Serco security staff milling around twiddling their thumbs there is virtually no-one using them! they are almost deserted,- where are the crowds? and the queues? - what is going on?
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I think the issue is laboratory capacity rather than that for the taking of swabs etc at testing centres.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Thu 8 Oct 20 at 11:49
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Having just done a a dummy run on the app, booking a test at the nearest drive-in centre seems easy enough. I was offered slots this afternoon. Obviously I cancelled the process at that point, so no idea how long it takes to get the results!
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>> Having just done a a dummy run on the app, booking a test at the
>> nearest drive-in centre seems easy enough. I was offered slots this afternoon. Obviously I cancelled
>> the process at that point, so no idea how long it takes to get the
>> results!
My son had a test last week. Had to drive from Liverpool to Bebington (Wirral) for it an got result (negative) in around 48hours.
From his gaff near Lark Lane it was an easy enough drive but as he pointed out it'd be a s o d on public transport - which of course you shouldn't use if symptomatic.
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True, but you’re asked when booking a test (or at least I was) if you have a access to a car or, for some reason, small van and if so offers drive in centres. I assume if you say no it only offers walk-in ones. Though I have no idea where my nearest on of those is. The nearest drive in to me is just outside Chichester, off the A27 at Tangmere (which has a pretty interesting military aviation museum)
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>> in to me is just outside Chichester, off the A27 at Tangmere (which has a
>> pretty interesting military aviation museum)
And a loco named after it.
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I volunteered for the national testing progam and had my first test last Wednesday. First test was last week. They test weekly for 5 weeks and then monthly. They are self administered and done at home. The test kit is delivered every week after a phone call.
At least that is what I was told would happen. The first test took place last Wednesday but nothing heard this week. No phone call, no email. My wife and I waited in on Wednesday but no visit.
A bit poor I think.
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>>A bit poor I think.
I think you'll find you are mistaken, old bean.
It's world-beating.
The 'contracts-for-mates' are going through the roof with HMG having emergency power to give out contracts.
Boris immediately giving peerages to Zac Goldsmith and Nicky Morgan after being booted by the electorate should have been ample warning to the nation how he operates (if they needed any more).
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>> Boris immediately giving peerages to Zac Goldsmith and Nicky Morgan after being booted by the
>> electorate should have been ample warning to the nation how he operates (if they needed
>> any more).
To be scrupulously fair:
Goldsmith lost his seat. He also fought a disgracefully racist campaign against Sadiq Khan for Mayor of London and is in danger of being a caricature of his Father.
Nicky Morgan stood down for a variety of reasons including being at opposite ends of the party to Boris and being fed up of sexist abuse.
She arguably justified elevation to the Lords.
He would not justify it in a month of Sundays.
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>>She arguably justified elevation to the Lords.
She spent about 3 years in a cabinet position.
Nah.
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>> She spent about 3 years in a cabinet position.
>>
>> Nah.
I'd have been shouting at the radio like a teacher when she was Minister for Education. But latterly on Brexit etc......
Or maybe I've just got a thing for brunettes :-P
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Thu 8 Oct 20 at 20:21
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I think the battle for complete lockdown, if indeed there was one, is lost.
BBC News - Coronavirus: Health experts join global anti-lockdown movement
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54442386
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Some countries can enforce a lockdown - eg: China - they have the political will and a population which is compliant when ultimately confronted by the prospect of prison camp or worse.
In the UK, and to a slightly lesser extent most of western Europe, policing is by consent. Putting the military on the streets would fundamentally change the nature of our democracy.
Compliance by consent means that a return to a full lockdown is likely only to create civil unrest - the poll tax riots would seem trivial by comparison.
We know the virus can be controlled through lockdown albeit at great cost. Government communication of the consequences of letting the virus take its course must not fall short of explaining very graphically the possible consequences.
IMHO separating the old and vulnerable from the rest of the community will only be partially effective however stringent the disease prevention controls. If lockdown is not an option we have to accept the consequence.
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>>separating the old and vulnerable from the rest of the community will only be partially effective however stringent the disease prevention controls
If it is enforced, I agree.
However, I am a vulnerable person. I keep well clear of all that can and very careful around of all that I cannot keep clear of. I don't need compelling to stay separate and look after myself.
If I do not choose to keep myself safe, why would anyone else care? Other than the NHS who have to pick up the pieces I guess, but even that issue will gradually resolve itself.
The laws should be used to enforce employer/business tolerance and flexibility and facilities for the public and employees to enable people to look after themselves, not force them to do so.
Let the general public do wtf they want including dying and killing their relatives. I cn think of no conceivable benefit for the world in keeping such numpties alive. I don't think a job as a sea anchor counts. Given that help and/or protection is given to those that need it, of course.
Able-bodied idiots need to focus on doing their bit for the world's average IQ.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Thu 8 Oct 20 at 22:14
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A major problem in the UK is that people will automatically do the opposite to what is requested because they feel they have the right.
I've said before and it is still true - here in Portugal everyone is wearing a mask in shops, nearly all properly, and there is no military on the street. From what I've seen shop assistants and other shoppers aren't fearful of getting a mouthful or a revenge attack if they callout someone isn't wearing a mask properly.
We just have too many know-it-all folk in the UK who will do what they want without any respect for others or for the law.
Policing ought not be "by consent". The laws are there for a reason and should be enforced.
Last edited by: smokie on Thu 8 Oct 20 at 23:20
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Totally agree.Exercising ones perceived 'rights and freedoms' is fine but underpinning that is the requirement for responsible behavior and to take personal responsibility.
Unfortunately a breakdown of those principles has been allowed to snowball.
Last edited by: Fullchat on Fri 9 Oct 20 at 00:28
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>>Policing by consent
The only one's that don't know this are the Police!
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I think you are misinterpreting policing by consent, which is an outcome of the Peelian principles of policing. It does not mean that we get to chose to follow the laws that we want to, it means that we and the police support each other in the community as a whole and accept the authority of the police rather than a more strict control force such as a militia or army.
The police are of the people not above the people and if anything has gone to far it is the raising of the police to a special status with regards internal review of complaints and alleged crimes committed by police with the latest being the wish to withhold BWVC footage and anonymity for officers involved in deaths in custody.
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>>The police are of the people not above the people
This is the bit the Police don't get! - A lot of them nowadays think they are!
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>> www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54274605 - follow up from vol 24
Apparently MP's voted on this in the Commons last night! - haven't heard result yet tho'.
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>> Apparently MP's voted on this in the Commons last night! - haven't heard result yet
>> tho'.
Surely the 'Thursday' in that report is either 24 September or a week later. I can't find anything like it in Hansard for yesterday (08 October):
hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2020-10-08
Edit: It's now at Committee Stage:
bills.parliament.uk/bills/2783/stages
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 9 Oct 20 at 10:58
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There was a "vid" on YT yesterday that mentioned it - a female MP posted it ,as she was against it I didn't notice the date tho' and I too cannot either find that vid today or any mention of it or the vote.
edit: Ah! - Thanks for that.
Last edited by: devonite on Fri 9 Oct 20 at 11:04
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Do we think Boris is handling this well... or badly?
Should the North West has these restrictions in place? Do we need a change of strategy? Let the under 40s get it, and worry about the over 40s?
Another clumsy speech by Boris coming on Monday, I think it is? I can't help but compare him with Nicola Sturgeon. Watched her yesterday, very sincere, almost pleading with her audience to trust and believe her.
Last edited by: Duncan on Sat 10 Oct 20 at 08:44
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It's rumoured the country is going to some traffic light system, I'm not sure that'll solve much.
Whatever rules you come up with someone will say it's too complicated to understand, too much top down etc, switch to something more local and they'll be complaints that the other side of the road can do xyz and they can't.
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>> It's rumoured the country is going to some traffic light system, I'm not sure that'll
>> solve much.
A straightforward R A G traffic light would at least have the benefit of clarity and simplicity. It now though looks as if we'll get 'tailored traffic lights' so red in Liverpool is going to be different from red in Tyneside.
>> Whatever rules you come up with someone will say it's too complicated to understand, too
>> much top down etc, switch to something more local and they'll be complaints that the
>> other side of the road can do xyz and they can't.
It's always going to follow local government boundaries and just like Council Tax is nil on one side of a road in London and £1500.00 on the other that's life.
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It's always going to follow local government boundaries and just like Council Tax is nil
>> on one side of a road in London and £1500.00 on the other that's life.
>>
Absolutely, doesn't stop people complaining though. I remember during the initial restrictions in Leicester, having such differences in one street brought out complaints that is was laughable one side of the street had different rules to the other.
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>> Do we think Boris is handling this well... or badly?
My view was that he was making a dog's breakfast of it from the get go. Somebody will along in a minute to say that's because I'm a Labour supporter and my opinion is therefore valueless.
It would be interesting to know how those who were saying in the Spring that he was doing well, or at least as well as can be expected, now think.
>> Nicola Sturgeon. Watched her yesterday, very sincere, almost pleading with her
>> audience to trust and believe her.
If only she joined Labour instead of the SNP........
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>> >> Do we think Boris is handling this well... or badly?
>>
>> My view was that he was making a dog's breakfast of it from the get
>> go. Somebody will along in a minute to say that's because I'm a Labour supporter
>> and my opinion is therefore valueless.
>>
>>
What do you think he should have done then and now?
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Whatever Boris does on Monday to reduce virus spread will alienate a large part of the population.
Any financial and jobs package will either be "quite inadequate" or "unaffordable".
Politicians like to please (or at least not alienate) too many voters. An explicit strategy is desperately needed but unlikely to be forthcoming - saving lives at any cost is fundamentally inconsistent with saving the economy.
So get ready for expressions of regret, difficult decision, sympathy for the affected blah, blah ....
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My biggest issue with the way the whole thing has been handled is not Boris . Let’s be honest, our political system means that whichever leader had been in charge was doomed to fail. And that’s because the Department of Health, Public Health England and the NHS trusts, hospitals and care homes have been shown to woefully ill prepared for any such crisis.
If I ran an NHS trust (and they’re well paid to do so) I’d be embarrassed that I didn’t have business continuity / contingency plans in place for basic PPE. Ventilators, sure, I’d accept that might be out of scope. If I was a senior civil servant in the Department of Health / PHE I’d be embarrassed that I had no plans for a large scale transmissible disease (I didn’t expect them to have plans for this precise eventuality, but I did think they’d have plans...) I’d also be embarrassed that I had no established way of easily collating data from hospitals. If I ran a care home I’d consider myself negligent accepting a patient/guest/customer/inmate without a negative COViD test. Sure, they might not have been a protocol in place, but they are all aware of their duty of care, and of H&S obligations. It’s not rocket science to go, hang on, there’s a really infectious disease going round. I want a negative test before you’re admitted. All of these organisation will say they were just following orders, I’m sure. But that’s a poor excuse, and shows an endemic lack of both skills and leadership.
Sure, Ministers are ultimately responsible. But in the short term they can only work with what they’ve got. I’ve seen Yes Minister ;) And of course they’re swayed by public opinion and the media. It’s laughable that the data collation problem at PHE was because they were using an excel file format superseded in 2007...that’s not any politicians fault, just sheer incompetence ion the part of whoever specc’ed and runs IT for the civil service.
I think that had Corbyn been in charge his indecisiveness would have led to tens of thousands more deaths early on, and chaos later. Had Starmer been in charge then we’d have probably had different, more consistent decisions, based on more (not necessarily better) evidence, but later. Lawyers provide advice, when in possession of all the facts. They hate making decisions. We still wouldn’t have locked down earlier, we would still have had the issues in care homes and we wouldn’t have had as good a support package from the chancellor. We probably would have a better test and trace process. Though whether we’d have used it, or complied is a different question... I’m not sure about communication and messaging - I actually think that the nudge method was working pretty well, until they cracked under media pressure. The punchy three works slogan at the beginning worked well. To well. It scared everyone too much! We might have closed borders, though to little benefit. We’d have ended up with a different shaped curve but, I suspect, the same overall outcome. And that’s that’s because none of the systematic failings in any of the organisations involved would have been avoided. Let’s not forget that Sturgeons ‘decisiveness’ is what sent COVID positive patients from hospitals to care homes... Certainly those I know in Scotland are very unimpressed by her dictator like approach. Didn’t she say in august that they’d almost eradicate it from Scotland?
Last edited by: VxFan on Sat 10 Oct 20 at 21:05
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I see she's been nicknamed, sturgeon the pint snatcher.
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I think what people overlook is that all countries are suffering, and while the degree of suffering falls partly on the readiness and supporting infrastructure, countries of all political colours and abilities are not having a good time.
It is easy to pick holes in what Boris has done ( - even as a Tory I am absolutely no fan of Boris!) but no-one has any particular way to do it all better. Obviously PPE shortages - but they happened elsewhere. As did the care homes fiascos and disaster planning for this scenario. Financial support has been very well managed IMO though obviously again with hindsight it could have been done differently. Track and trace turned out to be a bit of a disaster but no-one likes it anyway supposedly, and won't be loading the app.
The one thing I'm glad got overturned was the herd immunisation which, as I think is now being proven in Sweden where new cases are soaring despite supposed herd immunity first time round, would likely have had a far worse outcome than the actuality. But that was a science recommendation and it was the government who decided against it, from what I remember.
We have more to fear from our fellow citizens than our politicians!
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The UK is a country where the people cannot keep themselves safe unless there are specific, black and white law, with enforcement and punishment for every conceivable situation.
With grown ups it ought to be possible to say "it's a virus easily transmitted, mostly by air, so take precautions".
But no, people need rules. Which they will then protest about and insist are outrageous. Or perhaps not strict enough. Or perhaps not precise enough. Blah blah blah blah.
An entire Establishment (Government, NHS and all other organisations) was greeted with a situation it had never met before that needed urgent reaction.
The Government listened to scientists and medical experts and as far as I can see tried it's hardest and did it's best.
It didn't have the PPE it needed. And that is Johnson's fault? What utter garbage. That's what happens when you have an entire electorate that wants everything for nothing. An electorate who wants every budget cut but still every facility and service provided.
And all along the way it has been sniped at, abused, second-guessed, sneered at and generally criticised, mostly in the form of it's leader, by people who knew no better, would have done no better and would have achieved no more.
Even now they are being fought by anti mask people, anti lockdown people and yet being attacked for not locking down faster etc. etc.
It is pathetic, snivelling tripe. It is nothing to do with trying to learn from mistakes, it is nothing to do with trying to help or suggest. It is related solely to point scoring. Either to sell newspapers or win votes.
Ridiculous and they should be ashamed of themselves. All of them.
Nobody in the UK died for lack of hospital care. What more could any Government achieve?
The virus is going to spread no matter what. Unless you were seriously considering total lockdown until a vaccine is maybe available. All you can do is try to ensure that it doesn't spread so fast it breaks the NHS. The Government, no Government, can stop you getting it, they can only try to delay it.
Of those who catch it some are going to die. Currently there is nothing the Government, or anybody else, can do about that. Just offer as much care and treatment as possible and wait to see if they die.
I shouldn't think Johnson has done a great job, more than anything because he's a crap politician with no experience of managing a pandemic.
But neither has he completely cocked it up.
The political grandstanding is laughable and the media sensationalism is worse. I have no words for the Oompa-Loompas protesting that the precautions offend their rights. The world would be better off if they caught a bad case of COVID-19. One way or the other that's shut them up.
Nobody has got it perfectly right, because you can't.
The virus will spread
Some will die
There is no vaccine.
It's not difficult to understand.
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Of course the government hasn't got everything wrong, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but it has cocked up, unarguably to my mind, at least one really big thing which is test and trace. If Johnson wanted to get away with appointing an unqualified crony to sort the mess out it needed to work, and I believe we all needed it to work to save lives directly and indirectly by protecting the NHS.
The die has also been cast for the second wave. Cocking that up if it gets out of hand will be much harder to excuse than the earlier mistakes. There was 6 month's learning by September, and strong advice was apparently given to act sooner and more strongly.
So no, the government has not done what might reasonably have been expected given the resources at its disposal.
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>> Of course the government hasn't got everything wrong, even a stopped clock is right twice
>> a day
I think Manatee has hit the nail on the head. The greatest of the government’s failings is Testing and Track/Trace.
Testing seems to have been behind the curve from the word go. Whether the issue as administering the tests or getting samples analysed and the results back quickly enough to be useful or a combination of all three Johnson and Handcock have consistently over promised and under delivered. The supposed hitting of the 100,000 tests a day mark at end April was a bare faced deception with double counting and tests that got no further than being kits for posting out being added in. As of now they’re off beam for what’s been promised this month and the ‘Moonshot’ project has been scaled back.
On tracing there was, as I pointed out replying to Devonite, an established infrastructure for this in Local Authorities and the NHS. It’s long been used for dealing with notifiable diseases like TB, typhoid etc, for food poisoning and of course STDs. Instead of using and building on that they tried to re-invent the wheel.
A so called world beating app was abandoned after it failed the most basic testing. Even now we’ve got something based on the Apple/Google underpinnings the IT trade said would be required it’s still not working as it should. And what exactly is Lady Harding for?
There’s an article here:
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/13/what-has-gone-wrong-with-englands-covid-test-and-trace-system
It’s from The Guardian and you might discount for that paper’s slant but the basic facts it spells out seem beyond refute.
It’s very easy to try and blame the Care Homes, the NHS or the regulator for the early surge in cases where people were discharged without being tested. The direction to proceed rapidly with discharge of ‘bed blockers’ was made by Minsters. In and of itself that’s reasonable but the failure to ensure testing and indeed mandate it was again a deliberate decision. Amnesty International has produced a report on this:
tinyurl.com/y4osvwhx
I suggest reading the executive summary and in particular the debunking of the government’s lie that a protective ring was thrown around care homes. See also the bullet points on page 6.
While OFQUAL were responsible for the algorithm that crashed and burned the fact it was required rests at the door of Gavin Williamson and his political insistence on ‘no grade inflation’. He should have resigned over that. The fact that somebody with his record of prior incompetence and his probable dishonesty in his MoD role ever made Cabinet rank again speaks volumes about the sort of people Boris Johnson has been willing to elevate to high office.
I’d be willing to bet that there is another farrago around summer exams in 2021. The insistence that they go ahead, albeit with 3 weeks delay, beggars belief. The loss of three months of the eighteen or so of actual classroom time in a 2 year A level or GCSE course cannot be corrected over three weeks. That’s before the ongoing loss of teaching time since September as Teachers and whole cohorts of pupils have to self-isolate. There’s talk of tailored exams because of lost time. The schools teach a curriculum but approach it their own way; not every child doing A level Chemistry will have missed the same stuff between March and July. It won’t work. Of course if we had coursework that could mitigate but the above mentioned Gove, in a doctrinaire approach encouraged by his adviser Dominic Cummings abolished coursework.
Corbyn lost the election so it’s just speculation how he’d have coped. While he’s no more cut out for leadership than Boris he is at least a sincere and committed man. His team were far more capable than the present crew. Look at John McDonnell, Emily Thornberry, Angela Rayner and of course Starmer. Contrast with Raab, Pritti Patel and Suella Braverman.
If Johnson had been honest and published the Grieve Report on meddling in the referendum then maybe that would have been the jolt needed to get Jo Swinson to stop beggaring about and get a Unity Government in place a year ago. Then how might history have panned out?
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Wed 14 Oct 20 at 17:05
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>>While he's no more cut out for leadership than Boris he is at least a sincere and committed man. His team were far more capable than the present crew. Look at John McDonnell, Emily Thornberry, Angela Rayner and of course Starmer. Contrast with Raab, Pritti Patel and Suella Braverman.
Dinnae gies any o yer p***, man.
Corbyn surrounded himself with Corbynites. His Home Secretary was no better a choice than Patel, and I suspect would have been much worse once given actual responsibility.
Raab I felt managed to up his game appreciably when dumped into Boris's shoes - not prime minister material, but better than the current incumbent.
Sunak vs McDonnell? Not when I am ultimately footing the bill, thanks.
Labour needs someone who can tell Len McCluskey to do one - I hope they have that in Starmer or the Tories will have no viable opposition for the foreseeable.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Wed 14 Oct 20 at 17:15
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> His team were far more capable than the present crew. Look at John McDonnell,
>> Emily Thornberry, Angela Rayner and of course Starmer. Contrast with Raab, Pritti Patel and Suella
>> Braverman.
Two words.
Diane Abbott.
>>
>> If Johnson had been honest and published the Grieve Report on meddling in the referendum
>> then maybe that would have been the jolt needed to get Jo Swinson to stop
>> beggaring about and get a Unity Government in place a year ago. Then how might
>> history have panned out?
Who?
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>> Two words.
>>
>>
>> Diane Abbott.
How utterly predictable. She may, judged on recent (ie 2017 performances when she was ill) be the weak link in my argument. She didn not however get to be the first black woman in the Civil Service fast stream, the first black woman MP, the winner of awards for debating in the Commons or the holder of a regular slot on Andrew Neil's show by being an intellectual lightweight. And I hope nobody will use that last word as a peg for the sort of sexist labelling to which she is all to often exposed.
My point is that whenever the point is made that Johnson and his crew are making a pigs ear of government (in general not just Covid) somebody trots out a 'whataboutery' post on the imagined failings of a Corbyn government that never existed. In the course of my post I identified Michael Gove, whose policy stance on pretty much anything I abhor, as a competent Minster. I base that particularly on his time as LC and Sec of State for Justice. He also achieved what he set out to at Education, even if it was (IMHO) wrong headed and disastrous.
PM's have always wanted people in Cabinet who share their stance. The Blair era was not the first time that the PM was wary of those following a Mr G Brown:-). Boris has surrounded himself with people like Patel, Braverman and Raab (who looked like somebody on works experience as acting PM) who have but on qualification - belief in Brexit.
>> >> If Johnson had been honest and published the Grieve Report on meddling in the
>> referendum
>> >> then maybe that would have been the jolt needed to get Jo Swinson to
>> stop
>> >> beggaring about and get a Unity Government in place a year ago. Then how
>> might
>> >> history have panned out?
>>
>> Who?
Jo Swinson or Dominic Grieve? Google is your friend.
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Unity government?
Pass the pipe this way....
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>> >> Two words.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Diane Abbott.
>>
>> How utterly predictable.
I wouldn't want to disappoint.
Likewise you didn't let yourself down by getting 'whataboutery' in when defending Labour, 'utterly predictable'
You got a monk on about anyone comparing the two parties and then did exactly that yourself. Make your mind up.
Jo Swinson or Dominic Grieve? Google is your friend.
Ah the Lib dems, I remember them. My dog had about as much chance of forming any sort of government as she did.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Thu 15 Oct 20 at 14:52
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>> My dog had about as much chance of forming any sort of government as she did.
Tell me a bit about your dog's policies, I'll probably vote for it.
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>> >> My dog had about as much chance of forming any sort of government as
>> she did.
>>
>> Tell me a bit about your dog's policies, I'll probably vote for it.
>>
Thanks for the interest, we don't want to give too much away this far from an election. But safe to say we're strong on walks, treats and fussing, it's at the heart of who we are.
We're gaining real momentum to form the next unity government. Woof.
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>> You got a monk on about anyone comparing the two parties and then did exactly
>> that yourself. Make your mind up.
There's one for the 'words and phrases you'd not heard' thread!!
I just find it almost amusing that the response to criticism of the present government is no more involved than to try and say it could have been worse under Corbyn.
That ship's long gone.
Does anybody seriously think the current Cabinet is well endowed with political heavyweights?
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Thu 15 Oct 20 at 16:06
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There's one for the 'words and phrases you'd not heard' thread!!
You're right, I should have used a more straightforward word.
>>
>> I just find it almost amusing that the response to criticism of the present government
>> is no more involved than to try and say it could have been worse under
>> Corbyn.
>>
>> That ship's long gone.
>>
Seems perfect reasonable, just an extension of 'if not them who else?' comparing them is only natural.
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>>
>> Does anybody seriously think the current Cabinet is well endowed with political heavyweights?
>>
There are no political heavyweights on either side nowadays - those days are long gone. Soundbites are the future...Facebook, Twitter and YouTube clips, and a bit of theatre around PMQs. Politicians are so disconnected from the electorate and the real world that they’re all but irrelevant anyway...
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>>Does anybody seriously think the current Cabinet is well endowed with political heavyweights?
Never mind the cabinet, I'd go with the entire of Westminster. Total self-centered, hypocritical, shallow, out of touch disasters, the lot of them. Their focus is the media, not the country or the people.
Setting one lot up as Gods and the other as idiots dependent upon political allegiance is an antiquated nonsense which simply plays into their hands.
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>My dog had about as much chance of forming any sort of government as she did.
Actually I'd put serious money on your dog beating Swinson in a straight electoral vote. Most people are fonder of animals than they are of politicians.
Lajitas, Texas has had a goat as mayor since the '80s. He can get a bit stroppy after a few beers though.
texashillcountry.com/west-texas-mayor-beer-castrated/
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Aw heck Bromp.
You were doing well and I was agreeing with everything you said, until the last two paragraphs, then you completely stuffed up.
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>> Corbyn lost the election so it’s just speculation how he’d have coped. While he’s no
>> more cut out for leadership than Boris he is at least a sincere and committed
>> man. His team were far more capable than the present crew. Look at John McDonnell,
>> Emily Thornberry, Angela Rayner and of course Starmer. Contrast with Raab, Pritti Patel and Suella
>> Braverman.
>>
Would that be the Starmer who yesterday afternoon stood up in the House and said that a full national lockdown would be disastrous for the country, but by yesterday evening was calling for a national lockdown (now apparently called a circuit breaker?) and then today in the House at PMQ ‘genuinely’ believed a lockdown was necessary. As if his previous thoughts on the matter were not genuine. Hardly fills me with confidence in his leadership or critical thinking abilities ;)
The sad truth is that an inevitable consequence of any policy to slow the transmission of COVID is an increase in poverty and unemployment. There’s no right answer, despite the sound bite politics of the U.K. The variety of measures being taken across Europe and around the world show that, and underline the logic in, targeted local measures, robustly enforced where appropriate. Governments just have the unenviable job of navigating a way through as best they can for the whole of society. I’m sure that the opposition would say just throw more support at it, but that’s condemning a generation or two of those under 40 to pay the price for effectively their whole lives. I don’t understand why either party is happy with that outcome.
Anyway, don’t mind me... I’m going on holiday again next week to escape the madness!
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Well said.
Where are you going? Somewhere good?
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>> Well said.
>>
>> Where are you going? Somewhere good?
>>
Last weekend during a particularly drunken Saturday evening with a friend, and while we were putting the world to rights and bemoaning the lack of things to look forward to, he booked flights to St Lucia for us. No idea what the thought process was. I had to be reminded on Monday... But, we’re allowed in, no quarantine on return (yet...), hotels are reasonable, the weather will be better than here and it’ll make a change!
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I don't know the covid levels in St Lucia but can't understand why they would be happy for people from the Uk to come without any screening/ testing?K
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>> I don't know the covid levels in St Lucia but can't understand why they would
>> be happy for people from the Uk to come without any screening/ testing?K
>>
Money I would imagine, an economy built on tourism of which many are from the UK.
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>> I don't know the covid levels in St Lucia but can't understand why they would
>> be happy for people from the Uk to come without any screening/ testing?K
>>
They require a negative COViD test dated no more than 7 days before arrival and a pre-arrival questionnaire. That’s all done, and entry approved subject to negative test. Lloyds will do you a swab test for £119 or a saliva test for £49, results in 3/4 days including the postal time. So unless I have COVID (vanishingly small probability round here I reckon) then all good :)
And, compared to Americans, we’re a safe bet ;)
Last edited by: PeterS on Wed 14 Oct 20 at 21:20
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ah sorry, I read the "we're allowed in " as that there were no checks or measures.
My apologies.
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>> ah sorry, I read the "we're allowed in " as that there were no checks
>> or measures.
>> My apologies.
>>
No need to apologise; I could have been clearer :)
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>>Last weekend during a particularly drunken Saturday evening with a friend, and while we were putting the world to rights and bemoaning the lack of things to look forward to, he booked flights to St Lucia for us
Sounds like an all round great friend who is ideal to go on holiday with. I hope you have a great time, and I'm sure you will.
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>> Would that be the Starmer who yesterday afternoon stood up in the House and said
>> that a full national lockdown would be disastrous for the country,
When/what did he say? If 'yesterday' means Tuesday 13 October then, unless I've missed something, Hansard shows no contribution from Starmer in the House on that Day. He did say something on Monday about a full lockdown of indefinite duration. That's a very different thing from a circuit breaker as suggested by SAGE.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Thu 15 Oct 20 at 12:34
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>> It’s laughable that the data collation problem at PHE was because they were using an excel file format superseded in 2007
Just as an aside, in 1990 or thereabouts I did some work in the NHS, for Wessex, and one of the things I looked at was a particular monthly report they were doing.
Each hospital completed a report in Excel. They then printed it out and a motorcycle courier took it to the area supervising organisation, I forget the hierarchy now. The printed spreadsheet from each hospital was rekeyed into the area consolidation spreadsheet which was then printed and couriered to the regional office. There the area spreadsheets were all rekeyed into the regional consolidation spreadsheet for submission to London. Every month.
You should have seen the incredulity when all I suggested was that they courier it on floppy disk rather than hard copy to avoid keying errors.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, surprises me about NHS admin.
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Why did PHE run software that was 10+ years out of date?
They were avoiding spending money on software rental which might be £50 / £100 per year.
How much did the mis-counting, lack of tracing, more infections in the 2 /3 weeks -£millions.
The NHS IT is a guddle - they pay IT staff on admin scales - not on Professional Scales.
They lack IT knowledge and farm out contracts without the oversight needed. Then cut corners, fail to upgrade software & hardware and then when needed the systems cannot cope.
The original PHE software, March 2020, for track and trace, must have been PC based as it could only cope with tens or at best hundreds rather than potentially millions of cases/ contacts
PHE are advertising for a Senior IT Data person - Salary £36K to £46K - the requirements were extensive and so a person would need to be well qualified & with say 15 years+ experience. A commercial company would pay £60K-£70K at least and a lot more in the SE.
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>>NHS IT.
It doesn't surprise me. Miss Z reports totally different software running between her last trust and her current trust. Two DG hospitals in the current trust have different patient care software packages.
She had to write a paper for publication a while back for her last trust. Huge amount of data to sort and it wasn't in a consistent format.
I wrote some code in VBA to sort the different formats of data in to one flat file so that it could at least be sorted, filtered, added up, averaged and pivoted.
One of the problems probably security. They see email as vulnerable to attack hence printing out the workbooks. You can password protect workbooks and zip them to encrypted files.
The second complaint I have seen with emailing Excel files from numerous sources is that it takes an age to extract the attachments and save them down to a common folder.
Years ago now, I wrote a piece of VBA for Outlook that looked at each email in an account and if there was a matching file attachment it automatically saved it to a specified folder. It then opened each Excel workbook in the folder in turn and copied the data to a master workbook. Seriously - if I could do it then any half competent programmer could do it!!!
The NHS still use bleepers (life savers in the depths of a hospital) and fax machines - they are reliable.
Banks are notoriously slow for IT changes. We only moved to Windows 10 in 2019 and from Excel 2007 at the same time. Compatibility with existing apps is the main issue.
Last edited by: zippy on Sat 10 Oct 20 at 17:06
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>>The original PHE software, March 2020, for track and trace, must have been PC based as it
>>could only cope with tens or at best hundreds rather than potentially millions of cases/ contacts
I don't know. I processed several million transactions on a 5 year old i3 laptop to correct interest rate errors. It did take all day to load a workbook when it was full.
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>>I processed several million transactions
Transactions scanned is very different from inputting, searching, reporting on handling millions of names & addresses, contacts, dates, times, tracking input, .....................
A dedicated Unix box (s), Oracle / IBM / Teradata / database system that is scalable so when the numbers rise the system copes.
Not cheap but cheaper than IT failure.
20 years ago the SQA(Scottish Exam body) tried to change their computer system on the cheap £2 or 3 million IIRC - it blew up in their face, kids futures, University entry etc at stake .......it cost £36 million for the rescue work.
SQA bought 2 Unix boxes - the first blew up when their IT department connected it to a 3 phase supply instead of a 13 amp plug!
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SQA bought 2 Unix boxes - the first blew up when their IT department connected
>> it to a 3 phase supply instead of a 13 amp plug!
>>
Must be a rather strange story behind that one?
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Their old box in 2001 dated back to the 80s and their software was Cobol - it was a 3 phase supply.
Their "handyman / electrician" connected, what would be a £300+K box to the 3 phase supply.
3- phase is in the order of 420/440 volts - hence the box was fried.
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>> Their old box in 2001 dated back to the 80s and their software was Cobol
>> - it was a 3 phase supply.
>>
>> Their "handyman / electrician" connected, what would be a £300+K box to the 3 phase
>> supply.
>> 3- phase is in the order of 420/440 volts - hence the box was fried.
>>
That must have been a rather interesting 'connection'.
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>>Senior IT Data person - Salary £36K to £46K
They pay about 1/4 of the going rate for Project Directors/Managers for projects of that size yet, as you say, the requirements are ridiculous.
Very noticeably though virtually all the criteria can be satisfied in the classroom on courses.
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>> >> It’s laughable that the data collation problem at PHE was because they were using
>> an excel file format superseded in 2007
>>
>> Just as an aside, in 1990 or thereabouts I did some work in the NHS,
>> for Wessex, and one of the things I looked at was a particular monthly report
>> they were doing.
Not justifying but there's a view from the other side of the fence...
I suspect they simply used the computer/Excel to automate what was previously a manual process. In the late eighties I was working in an organisation the dealt with private monies under the control of the courts. We replaced a system where forms were filled in, keyed (twice) and the data processed by a contractor with one where we had screens on our desks but the input screens all matched the names/layouts of the forms.
Later on somebody charged with computerising County Courts asked a revolutionary question; why are we collecting millions of payments every year from debtors and passing them on to creditors?
It's difficult to remember or rationalise now the way in which IT, in the late eighties nineties. was regarded as fallible and impermanent. We must have wasted forests worth of paper printing off daily reports deafening ourselves with dot matrix printers and having acres of racking in the office and much more in the basement to store the n years worth we were required to keep.
I guess a floppy disc in 1990 was probably the 5 inch sort. If you're at all risk averse you'd not commit 'valuable' datsa to one. I'm not sure our early PC's even had on an on board HDD; the DOS operating system was loaded daily from floppies.
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>> they simply used the computer/Excel to automate what was previously a manual process.
No. I do know both what they were doing and why they were doing it. Neither of which have much bearing on why they wouldn't change it.
The main driver to most of their behaviours was their insular attitude. They did not accept that they needed to pay attention to anything outside their own world.
>>guess a floppy disc in 1990 was probably the 5 inch sort. If
Actually not. 3.5s came in in the early 80s and were in general use by 1990.
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>>Later on somebody charged with computerising County Courts asked a revolutionary question; why are we collecting millions of payments every year from debtors and passing them on to creditors?
Not with courts, but that is essentially how I got started.
Asking people why they were doing something was a revolutionary approach. And novel.
Reports were often the trail to be followed; person complied a report and passed it to person b. Person B included other figure and passed it to person C. Person C consolidated all the local reports and submitted them to person D at head office.
Person D who had originally demanded the report had long since moved on, he had not been replaced and Person E now got all his mail. Person E had no idea what the report was for and so just deleted it every month.
Entire processes, many people, lots of work, all going to the bin every month.
The 80s & 90s and increasingly to Y2K consisted largely of finding mountains such stuff and removing processes and people.
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>>Somebody will along in a minute to say that's because I'm a Labour supporter and my opinion is therefore valueless.
Not valueless. Often quite informative actually. Just usually blinkered and often badly biased. Who can tell when and by how much.
>>It would be interesting to know how those who were saying in the Spring that he was doing well, or at least as well as can be expected, now think.
I'd still go with "as well as can be expected".
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People may be interested in the PHE remit letter for 2019, and repeated in 2020.
"Fulfil the Secretary of State’s duty to protect the public’s health from infectious
diseases and other public health hazards, working with the NHS, local government
and other partners in England, and also working with the devolved administrations
and globally where appropriate. This means providing the national infrastructure
for health protection including: an integrated surveillance system; providing
specialist services, such as diagnostic and reference microbiology; developing,
translating and exploiting public health science, including developing the
application of genomic technologies; work to address antimicrobial resistance;
investigation and management of outbreaks of infectious diseases and
environmental hazards; ensuring effective emergency preparedness, resilience and
response for health emergencies, including global health security; acting as the
focal point for the UK on the International Health Regulations; and evaluating the
effectiveness of the immunisation programme and procuring and supplying
vaccines".
They have utterly failed. As have other bodies such as the Care Quality Commission who failed to report on the inadequacies in care home management, and OFQUAL who failed miserably in sorting out the exam fiasco.
One wonders how many other government watchdogs are equally deficient in their own field (eg: Gambling Commission). Change is long overdue!
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They have utterly failed. As have other bodies such as the Care Quality Commission who
>> failed to report on the inadequacies in care home management, and OFQUAL who failed miserably
>> in sorting out the exam fiasco.
>>
>> One wonders how many other government watchdogs are equally deficient in their own field (eg:
>> Gambling Commission). Change is long overdue!
>>
>>
I wonder how many of these at arms length watchdogs are given such narrow remits and limited funding they are nothing but tickbox office wallahs? Probably been like that for years and years.
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>>One wonders how many other government watchdogs are equally deficient in their own field
I could give you a reasonably accurate guess - all of them.
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I'm no expert in this but it's not clear to me, even with the benefit of hindsight, which bits of that remit the PHE have "utterly failed" on, and thus what ought they have done to have not failed.
It strikes me that we are in a situation the size, impact and longevity of which no-one could have properly foreseen or planned for, yet the public (or is it the press?) expectation was that the government should have known all the answers before the questions even arose.
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£122m contract for PPE given (without tender) to a firm less than 2 months old started by a chum of Baroness Mone.
The trough is full.
Tuck in.
www.heraldscotland.com/news/18780543.government-awarded-urgent-ppe-contract-firm-run-ex-associate-tory-peer-michelle-mone/
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>> I'm no expert in this but it's not clear to me, even with the benefit
>> of hindsight, which bits of that remit the PHE have "utterly failed" on, and thus
>> what ought they have done to have not failed.
>>
>
Earlier on this year when it was pretty clear there was going to be a big increase in testing PHE were reluctant to let any other organisation get involved in testing even NHS labs. From listening and reading from those that have worked with them earlier this year, it's no great surprise they were chopped.
The way the winds were blowing it was on the cards months before the announcement, I think I mentioned it on here.
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Whilst well to the North of Nottingham, I'm anticipating some fairly draconian lockdown being announced tomorrow.
(Though my council area has two MPs, both Tory and both cabinet members, so just maybe....... ;-) )
Nottingham has, of course, just gone to number one in the charts in the last week, from almost nowhere.
It is worthwhile pondering why. It's nothing at all to do with the returning student population, of course, just like all the other major University cities. :-(
Except, in this case, it possibly is, in spades.
Nottm University is running its own screening program, across all students and staff, and has extended the process to Nottm Trent University.
The screening isn't elective, it is all the Uni population, symptomatic or not.
The resulting figures do not find their way into the official statistics, BUT, if you test positive it is mandatory to have an "NHS" test to confirm (and this overrides the initial result if it proves negative). The NHS results do hit the official statistics.
The net effect of this is to skew the Nottingham results in several ways.
i) asymptomatic positives in the NHS stats will be higher. Normally you shouldn't go for an NHS test if you're asymptomatic anyway, but this process means a significant number will, and are very likely to test positive (since they already have). Stats aren't easy to obtain, but indications are that there are a lot of Uni positives, a large proportion of which are asymptomatic.
ii) as a corollary, the prooprtion of positive NHS tests proving positive will be higher.
I don't think there is a similar process in place elsewhere in the UK. This is no small matter, the combined Uni populations in question are of the order of 80,000 students and staff.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics?
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>>Lies, damn lies, and statistics?
The problem with statistics is that they need to be compiled by clever people and are best used by clever and perceptive people.
They're not a good tabloid or political tool, but are just so appealing and deceptively appear simple.
Have you ever seen a tabloid or politician understand the mechanics and importance of selection, for example.
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Three of our paperboys have phoned in, all go to the local school and have been sent home to self isolate for a week as one of their year is off with suspected Corona virus.
That will be fun in the morning, I've got to go out delivering :-(
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>>
>> That will be fun in the morning, I've got to go out delivering :-(
>>
...that's OK, you'll soon have a couple of weeks' self-isolation to recover from it. ;-)
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>> Three of our paperboys have phoned in, all go to the local school and have
>> been sent home to self isolate for a week as one of their year is
>> off with suspected Corona virus.
I think this sort of thing is causing significant disruption in schools.
It was mentioned on the radio this morning in the context of the government's insistence that exams go ahead with only a three week delay.
I've had work referrals for supply teachers unable to work due to self isolation. Our workplace discussion group suggests I'm far from alone.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Tue 13 Oct 20 at 14:44
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>> That will be fun in the morning, I've got to go out >>delivering :-(
Our friendly newsagent has mastered the art of delegation - he gets his wife to do additional deliveries.
I thought of becoming a newsagent years ago and looked at many that were for sale at the time, but found that those with the sort of turnover that I wanted were not in the places that I would want to live.
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Not much of a business in general. Ours stopped offering confectionary a the profit margin was too low to be worthwhile. It later closed its shop altogether but still distributes papers from a nearby warehouse.
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>>Three of our paperboys have phoned in, all go to the local school and have been sent home to self isolate for a week as one of their year is off with suspected Corona virus.
Suspect those who still get papers delivered maybe fall into the elderly/vulnerable group.
Do the paperboys use gloves???
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>>
>>
>> Suspect those who still get papers delivered maybe fall into the elderly/vulnerable group.
>> Do the paperboys use gloves???
>>
Gloves and masks, but if you pick up germs they will be on the glove too. There is apparently very little chance of catching anything from paper, evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of postal delivery workers have been carrying on as normal.
Couriers seem to be getting away with it too.
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just had a bit of a surprise! - those new Covid wombles are on £27 - £29.500k a year! What a bloomin waste! ;-(
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>> just had a bit of a surprise! - those new Covid wombles are on £27
>> - £29.500k a year! What a bloomin waste! ;-(
Which Covid wombles are these?
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The very very badly needed Covid Marshals, only they seem to justify the salary by giving them an important sounding title - Covid Technical Officer!
Not bad for someone walking around peering through pub letterboxes after 10!
Last edited by: devonite on Wed 14 Oct 20 at 14:37
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Where did you see the salary figure you mention?
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On a Copeland council recruitment Ad - 2 wanted, - out of curiosity I have just phoned them to ask if it was office-based or street patrol, they say mainly street, but occasional office work included ( rainy-days perhaps?) - Oh, and they get a car allowance on top and 37hrs wk.
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>> Not bad for someone walking around peering through pub letterboxes after 10!
Judging from the ad the main purpose seems to be contact tracing. I think the government have finally realised that Dido Harding's centralised service doesn't work and is a re-invention of the wheel. Council's Medical Officer of Health and NHS have done this stuff for ever for outbreaks of communicable disease, food poisoning and of course STDs.
If you've seen the ad and the person specification what do you think would be reasonable pay?
The offer looks like about £14/hr. Not bad but for that level of experience?
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They told me that it was mainly street, but they may well double up on tracing duties whilst in the office capacity of the job, but really £14hr for walking around telling folk their too close, their masked has slipped, or phoning folk to tell them to stay home or talking to shop-keepers to see if they are following the rules, whilst folk with decent jobs are thrown out of work or struggling on 2/3 pay?- I think it's far too much - living wage at most!
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>> They told me that it was mainly street, but they may well double up on
>> tracing duties whilst in the office capacity of the job
I think the criticism of the HArding/Serco tracing is that it's ineffective because it's dependant on minimum wage call handlers with a job card and a script. Where there has been success it's been by reverting to old fashioned door knocking.
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>> Not bad for someone walking around peering through pub letterboxes after 10!
I think I might have previous experience and the required skill set for that very thing :)
Last edited by: Fullchat on Wed 14 Oct 20 at 16:52
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>>those new Covid wombles are on £27 - £29.500k a year!
I find it depressing that we end up in a place where we have people employed specifically to force others to keep themselves safe.
Surely we should focus on keeping decent and valuable people safe for about 6 weeks while we allow these muppets to run free, enjoy their 'rights' rub up against each other and breath on each other and thus solve the problem for us?
In each troubled area we could allow a single premier league fixture with spectators to go ahead though obviously issue warnings to all and sundry that it is likely that they will catch a virus that may kill them and theirs. That ought to accelerate things nicely.
I've quite had enough of the planks. So since they are convinced there's no danger, let them go resolve the matter once and for all.
There was a Government study which estimated that unrestrained the virus would have ceased to be an issue after 400 days. Stopping the Oompa-Loompas catching it is simply extending that period for no good reason.
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At her briefing today, Nicola advised Scots not to travel to Blackpool as it has been a factor in a large number of track and trace reports. Blackpool has traditionally welcomed Scots during our Sept weekend and October school week.
A relative of my in laws had been on a bus trip to Blackpool from Glasgow two weeks ago. She was morbidly obese but “that Sturgeon isn’t telling me what to do”.
She died with Covid at weekend. It turns out she was feeling “fluey” before she went down but still travelled on a bus because it was her annual Lodge trip and they had never missed one. So maybe she took it down as opposed to brought it back!
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Saw a patient at the local Covid Hub (not from my practice) who had returned from a holiday in the North of England with a fever and who didn't ever wear a mask "because of my emphysema".
I suspect your in-laws' relative was far from alone in her behaviour.
Some people just don't want to listen to the message.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Wed 14 Oct 20 at 16:24
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respect the 'right' of people to reject mask-wearing, but given it is essentially for the protection of other they should then stay at home or at least make extra efforts to avoid getting near other people.
Unfortunately, mask-rejection seems to go hand in hand with wanting to carry on as normal.
Our community shop allows one customer in at a time (it's unlikely that separation could be maintained otherwise) and asks that everyone wears a mask - volunteers and customers. Anyone who doesn't have a mask can be served at the door and we do this for a couple of regulars. But occasionally we have problems with young males (always young males) who make a point of entering 2 or 3 at a time, unmasked.
Given that the average age of the volunteers is about 65, and that of the customers even greater, I class their behaviour as irresponsible.
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I see that some business are staying open in Liverpool, in spite of the new rules requiring them to close. I'm sure that they won't be the last.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Wed 14 Oct 20 at 18:24
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There was some discussion many months ago of issuing those who had Covid with an "immunity passport". They could then go out and return to normality - get drunk, party, go on hols without quarantine etc.
It may be better to issue "Covid passports" to those who haven't had the virus so they can go out and party, get drunk ........ etc.
One absolute condition of said "passport" would be that once issued it could not be cancelled, and once your name is on the passport database you get no treatment if you contract Covid.
If you go out and party without a passport you would be given one for free AND a chunky fine.
Would sort out the men from the idiots, so to speak!
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>> And face a £10,000 fine?
>>
They seem unconcerned about any action. Perhaps the news will follow up and see what happens.
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Coronavirus - Volume 24 - No FM2R
