The UK response - Part II - read OP

Aegir wrote: »

That sort of childishness pretty much sums up 90% of the posts on this thread.

Does "childishness" have a different definition in your dialect?

Aegir wrote: »

Without wishing to sound like Bonnie, is there anything to support this?

The difference being, unlike you, Celtic Rambler will likely respond to your request without getting snippy.

Aegir wrote: »

Without wishing to sound like Bonnie, is there anything to support this?

Support what? The fact that the UK government deliberately degraded its pandemic response after the publication of the pandemic response report? Yes, it's all been documented (links in the last UK-Covid thread)

Aegir wrote: »

The latter bit where you claim the French did not pay for faulty PPE but the British did.

We know that the British government paid for faulty PPE - it was widely reported at the time. You're the one who raised the point about the French. To my knowledge, the French government did not pay for any faulty PPE; several private companies decided to order directly from Chinese suppliers - instead of going through French/Euro-certified suppliers - and bought non-conforming PPE. If you can find a link that says the French government paid for faulty PPE, let's have it; in the meantime, I can only say that all of mine was perfectly correct.

What seems to have happened in the UK, based on the most recent revelations, is that the British government, instead of giving the work to people who knew what to look for in the products they were ordering, gave the contracts to every Tom, Dick and Harry with ties to the Tory party, regardless of the competence. That is a pattern of behaviour that has been repeated throughout the administration in respect of more than Covid; but this time they've taken it to extremes.

Thanks to the corrupt UK government that poor old guy, who raised money for the NHS, will have to walk around his garden again.

CelticRambler wrote: »

And then gave the procurement contracts to people with no experience in procurement of medical supplies. Why?

The optimistic answer to this question is the fact that consulting companies and financial houses will take on absolutely any kind of work whatsoever if the contract is large enough. They don't restrict themselves to specific industries, they follow the Branson motto of "say yes and figure out how to do the job later". This is why you end up with the likes of Deloitte running large government software projects and making an absolute balls of it.

And it's possible that the people awarding the contracts didn't have the experience to know this and were impressed by nice graphs and big promises.

Of course, the pragmatic answer is that the person awarding the contract was in some way connected to the company who won it.

Aegir wrote: »

sorry, are you disputing that French health care workers were shipped faulty goods? They may disagree https://www.20minutes.fr/sante/2755787-20200406-video-coronavirus-marseille-surblouses-friables-comme-papier-distribuees-soignants-ap-hm

On the basis of that quote, yes: 300 faulty coveralls in a lot of 20400 - 0.15% so quite a lot less than the 50% you were citing earlier. Oh, and these were drawn from stock ordered before the pandemic. In my experience, that'd be a reasonably typical failure rate for a disposable item in the healthcare environment. Oh, and the problem was identified as being due to a number of boxes having become damp during storage - in France.

Seeing as that's the standard at which you're debating, I'm off out to spend quality time with my tomatoes.

Aegir wrote: »

It looks like the masks were ordered and delivered to the correct standard, but ear loops/head band fitting doesn’t fall in to the scope of the standard for some reason.

So I guess as we’ve probably all found out in the last few weeks, ear loop fittings are ok for some, not for others.

We will have to see, but it seems like the standard was for head straps and not around the ear, which is what was delivered,

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1291251935564242944?s=20

Aegir wrote: »

The legal papers were issued by The Good Law People, they do not relate to any disputes between Ayanda and the Government.

You would have thought had a company not been paid for a contract that big they would have made a fuss about it to the Good Law Project (note the name, not Good Law People) to keep their name clear. But I don't know if they were paid on delivery or ahead of schedule or upon inspection of the goods and neither do you. What we do have is the UK government stating that 50 million masks cannot be used in the NHS and will not be used. But they do not say whether the masks will be returned or money be withheld from Ayanda Capital.

It is apparent again that you either haven't read the links provided on the contract. The information is there about the head straps or ear straps. This is not a case of it being okay for one and not for another, it just seems like a incompetent government was scrambling due to their own failures and as such they have now wasted money on items that are worthless for the NHS. The fact that the contract was going to go to an adviser of the DIT but he facilitated it with Ayanda instead because he wasn't set up for international payments yet with his company worth £100 is probably just some coincidence.

I will say again, it appears that the UK government was going to give a company that has nothing to its name and it seems only worth £100 a £252m contract to supply PPE.

Aegir wrote: »

That doesn’t say anything about it not working. Reaching 90% of contacts seems pretty good. I’m not sure how that compares with other nations though.

Read again. It's the local public health teams who have been reaching 90% of known contacts. The centralised call centre teams reached a high of 70%, but their performance has fallen since then.

Aegir wrote: »

It seemed pretty clear early on that they had too many people though, so a reduction in numbers seemed on the cards. It makes sense for this to be more local as well, especially when it needs to tackle local outbreaks in certain parts of the community.

They put too many resources into the centralised call centres, and not enough into the (more old-fashioned, but more effective) local teams. The rebalancing does indeed make sense, and its based on the observation that, internationally, decntralised and locally-directed contract tracing efforts have generally been more successful than centralised and nationally-directed efforts.

Which means the reallocation of resources is a good decision, and should be applauded. But it does raise the question of why the original decision was the other way. That, with hindsight, was the wrong decision, and it is worth asking how the wrong decision came to be made, and whether there is anything to be learned from this.

There's perhaps a pattern here, because of course the UK government also made the wrong decision with respect to the contract tracing app, and the decision was again to prioritise centralisation of data rather than a distributed system. So there's possibly a systemic preference for centralisation that isnt' based on prioritising effective systems, but on something else (like an appetite for data harvesting and exploitation).

Seth Brundle wrote: »

I do not believe that there will ever be an inquiry into the UK government's response into the virus. Whatever about the crooked Tory MPs, at this stage there are far too many departmental seniors caught up in it by following decisions that went against the greater good or that were made primarily for self-interest purposes.
There may be a form of Widgery whitewash which will appease many of the tabloids and keep things quiet until the official papers are released in decades to come.

Agreed. It would be a disaster for all involved.

Therefore, another day and another case of accusations of cronyism with regards to the Tories. Argar has been doing the rounds defending test & trace this morning, but was caught out in regards to his connections to Serco, whom have been accused of making a mess of the whole thing.

https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1293102650830073856

He also compared the fact that the UK has traced more contacts then New Zealand as a success.

Someone might need to sit him down and explain that having to trace thousands of contacts compared to hundreds is not a good thing :pac:

Peregrinus wrote: »

Read again. It's the local public health teams who have been reaching 90% of known contacts. The centralised call centre teams reached a high of 70%, but their performance has fallen since then.


They put too many resources into the centralised call centres, and not enough into the (more old-fashioned, but more effective) local teams. The rebalancing does indeed make sense, and its based on the observation that, internationally, decntralised and locally-directed contract tracing efforts have generally been more successful than centralised and nationally-directed efforts.

Which means the reallocation of resources is a good decision, and should be applauded. But it does raise the question of why the original decision was the other way. That, with hindsight, was the wrong decision, and it is worth asking how the wrong decision came to be made, and whether there is anything to be learned from this.

There's perhaps a pattern here, because of course the UK government also made the wrong decision with respect to the contract tracing app, and the decision was again to prioritise centralisation of data rather than a distributed system. So there's possibly a systemic preference for centralisation that isnt' based on prioritising effective systems, but on something else (like an appetite for data harvesting and exploitation).

We discussed contact tracing I believe when they were setting up their system and how there was a system in place already. The UK decided to bypass that system of using the local PHE expertise and expanding it and went with their new centralised system. The fact that one of the companies involved was one of those that a Health Minister used to work for is probably another coincidence
along with the DIT adviser almost getting a £252m contract for his £100 company.

Now when the problems are being laid bare of the failures of this we are told the millions being wasted is far down the list of priorities. The cost of these failures will be many times more the money people raised for Captain Tom, but it is not a priority.

Wait, look over there are people in dinghy's trying to get into the UK. Let's forget about what is happening elsewhere and focus on them instead!

Seth Brundle wrote: »

Who are the brit bashers?
Surely if there is something against the rules, you should report it.
Or are you referring to those who criticise the efforts by the British government in response to the pandemic (and similarly those who oppose the economic armageddon that is Brexit)

Just more deflection really. Anytime a story is posted about some new contract going to a company that has links to someone within the current government it will be considered Brit bashing.

You can also see it when there is a post about crowded beaches, our friend Aegir will ask about a beach in Ireland that was crowded as well. What that has to do with the "UK response" is a mystery, but it makes him feel better so there is that I suppose.