Meanwhile in the Mail: AI 'could wipe out humanity'
Any kind of intelligence would wipe out the Daily Mail... their coverage of This Morning is bordering on the ludicrous today.
I haven't been following it is detail because it like most DM stories is so puerile, but I can't help thinking that the Daily Mail obsession with this is just a thinly disguised excuse to cause outrage amongst it's largely homophobic readership
Schofield’s behaviour, however, has been awful.
As has that of ITV in how they dealt with it. Numerous people have come out of the woodwork, not with wisdom after the event, but to say they had made official complaints or representations about it.
I suspect the beginning of the end for Pip was the queue jumping.
I am not sure, however, this is a matter for politicians seeing they are hauling in ITV to interrogate them over it.
The Heil are going after him because culture wars. He is yet another TV leftie* who comes over all sanctimonious. Instead of telling people Common Sense things like "isn't Boris great" and "the police should reopen currygate", he sits there with his heart on his sleeve with "I am gay" and people being sympathetic to his deviance.
I honestly don't care about This Morning or Schofield. What he allegedly has done sounds a little *interestng* morally, but we all live in the same greenhouse armed with stones. What IS interesting is the reaction from the right, who are going after him like he is Rolf Harris. He isn't, but the Heil readership have been induced to be so judgemental that they're lapping it up.
*anyone who isn't a GBeebies presenter is a TV leftie
Sky have been leading on the Schofield story ad infinitum
I get the impression that Schofield might just have upset a few other people in the media in the past. Both in front of, and behind, the camera.
It's quite simple: what he did should have got him sacked much earlier than it did. It also highlights (sadly, yet again) a problem in the media, with the 'talent' abusing their position and power. And my goodness, the optics of it are terrible for him.
What's the overlap between the This Morning audience and the Mail's readership? I could imagine it being fairly substantial.
In which case, the Mail are doing one of the things good journalism does- finding about about something important in the lives of their readers. But also something bad journalism does- doing down a commercial rival (for advertising, if nothing else).
See also: newspaper crusades against WFH.
Cummings said that No.10 used to take phone calls at least weekly, from newspaper *proprietors*, about “The WFH Situation”. The largest audience for buying newspapers, being train commuters.
Meanwhile in the Mail: AI 'could wipe out humanity'
Any kind of intelligence would wipe out the Daily Mail... their coverage of This Morning is bordering on the ludicrous today.
I haven't been following it is detail because it like most DM stories is so puerile, but I can't help thinking that the Daily Mail obsession with this is just a thinly disguised excuse to cause outrage amongst it's largely homophobic readership
Schofield’s behaviour, however, has been awful.
As has that of ITV in how they dealt with it. Numerous people have come out of the woodwork, not with wisdom after the event, but to say they had made official complaints or representations about it.
I suspect the beginning of the end for Pip was the queue jumping.
I am not sure, however, this is a matter for politicians seeing they are hauling in ITV to interrogate them over it.
The Heil are going after him because culture wars. He is yet another TV leftie* who comes over all sanctimonious. Instead of telling people Common Sense things like "isn't Boris great" and "the police should reopen currygate", he sits there with his heart on his sleeve with "I am gay" and people being sympathetic to his deviance.
I honestly don't care about This Morning or Schofield. What he allegedly has done sounds a little *interestng* morally, but we all live in the same greenhouse armed with stones. What IS interesting is the reaction from the right, who are going after him like he is Rolf Harris. He isn't, but the Heil readership have been induced to be so judgemental that they're lapping it up.
*anyone who isn't a GBeebies presenter is a TV leftie
Sky have been leading on the Schofield story ad infinitum
I get the impression that Schofield might just have upset a few other people in the media in the past. Both in front of, and behind, the camera.
It's quite simple: what he did should have got him sacked much earlier than it did. It also highlights (sadly, yet again) a problem in the media, with the 'talent' abusing their position and power. And my goodness, the optics of it are terrible for him.
As I understand it, PS had an affair with a much younger man while married; this came out a year or so back but was batted away by his PR deflecting the story onto him being gay. I wonder if there was a feeling in the media that he'd got away with it, and so with the story coming round again the pile-on is all the greater.
I think there’s still more to be revealed (one doesn’t have to search very hard on social media).
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
Joining is not misleading. It was an official accession country, accepted by the EU (like now Ukraine and unlike say Georgia) and listed on their own website as a nation that was in the process of joining the EU, which as they say is a complex process that does not happen overnight.
If joining the EU only referred to the date of accession, then it would happen overnight, but the EU explicitly say that is not the case.
Indeed if you go to the "joining EU" webpage of the EU's own website, Turkiye as its now called is still listed on that webpage.
We all know what it was: misleading in order to provoke fear. The project fear of the leave side.
Both sides were at it - I wasn’t so bothered about the misleading part, that’s how political campaigns work. The more problematic bit was the dark emotions this was deliberately trying to stir, with Syria and Iraq and arrows: only one small step removed from Farage’s breaking point poster.
Meanwhile in the Mail: AI 'could wipe out humanity'
Any kind of intelligence would wipe out the Daily Mail... their coverage of This Morning is bordering on the ludicrous today.
I haven't been following it is detail because it like most DM stories is so puerile, but I can't help thinking that the Daily Mail obsession with this is just a thinly disguised excuse to cause outrage amongst it's largely homophobic readership
Schofield’s behaviour, however, has been awful.
As has that of ITV in how they dealt with it. Numerous people have come out of the woodwork, not with wisdom after the event, but to say they had made official complaints or representations about it.
I suspect the beginning of the end for Pip was the queue jumping.
I am not sure, however, this is a matter for politicians seeing they are hauling in ITV to interrogate them over it.
The Heil are going after him because culture wars. He is yet another TV leftie* who comes over all sanctimonious. Instead of telling people Common Sense things like "isn't Boris great" and "the police should reopen currygate", he sits there with his heart on his sleeve with "I am gay" and people being sympathetic to his deviance.
I honestly don't care about This Morning or Schofield. What he allegedly has done sounds a little *interestng* morally, but we all live in the same greenhouse armed with stones. What IS interesting is the reaction from the right, who are going after him like he is Rolf Harris. He isn't, but the Heil readership have been induced to be so judgemental that they're lapping it up.
*anyone who isn't a GBeebies presenter is a TV leftie
Sky have been leading on the Schofield story ad infinitum
I get the impression that Schofield might just have upset a few other people in the media in the past. Both in front of, and behind, the camera.
It's quite simple: what he did should have got him sacked much earlier than it did. It also highlights (sadly, yet again) a problem in the media, with the 'talent' abusing their position and power. And my goodness, the optics of it are terrible for him.
As I understand it, PS had an affair with a much younger man while married; this came out a year or so back but was batted away by his PR deflecting the story onto him being gay. I wonder if there was a feeling in the media that he'd got away with it, and so with the story coming round again the pile-on is all the greater.
I think there’s still more to be revealed (one doesn’t have to search
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
Johnson wanted to be PM. Wanted it so much he destroyed the careers of many others to make it happen.
If he didn't want the decision making that came with it, he shouldn't have done that.
It makes me wonder *why* he wanted the job, if he was not prepared to put in the work.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
Johnson wanted to be PM. Wanted it so much he destroyed the careers of many others to make it happen.
If he didn't want the decision making that came with it, he shouldn't have done that.
You mean it's impossible to have something desirable without its consequences, which might be undesirable?
If only there were a metaphor to express that in a pithy way. Should be a piece of cake to come up with one.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
Joining is not misleading. It was an official accession country, accepted by the EU (like now Ukraine and unlike say Georgia) and listed on their own website as a nation that was in the process of joining the EU, which as they say is a complex process that does not happen overnight.
If joining the EU only referred to the date of accession, then it would happen overnight, but the EU explicitly say that is not the case.
Indeed if you go to the "joining EU" webpage of the EU's own website, Turkiye as its now called is still listed on that webpage.
We all know what it was: misleading in order to provoke fear. The project fear of the leave side.
Both sides were at it - I wasn’t so bothered about the misleading part, that’s how political campaigns work. The more problematic bit was the dark emotions this was deliberately trying to stir, with Syria and Iraq and arrows: only one small step removed from Farage’s breaking point poster.
I agree with the arrows thing, I find that very distasteful personally.
That is a much better argument than the claim about lies, which is just not true.
What was said was a matter of fact and record, that even the EU themselves say. The way it was portrayed was ugly, unpleasant and I don't like that. Something can be both true and portrayed in an ugly manner, but as you say that's how political campaigns work.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
More whataboutery for a party I don't support. Back to the actual government. We did ignore the PPE companies - fairly heavy coverage during and after all this took place
Again, we bet the lives of the people on Matt Hancock's pub landlord and Lady Mone, amongst others. That isn't smart tactics even in a war. Basic question to ask them - how will you get this stuff? When the Answer is "Ali Express" then go there yourself - or with a company who actually knows what they were doing.
No wonder we received plane loads of unusable junk. Ali Express vendors must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
Meanwhile in the Mail: AI 'could wipe out humanity'
Any kind of intelligence would wipe out the Daily Mail... their coverage of This Morning is bordering on the ludicrous today.
I haven't been following it is detail because it like most DM stories is so puerile, but I can't help thinking that the Daily Mail obsession with this is just a thinly disguised excuse to cause outrage amongst it's largely homophobic readership
Schofield’s behaviour, however, has been awful.
As has that of ITV in how they dealt with it. Numerous people have come out of the woodwork, not with wisdom after the event, but to say they had made official complaints or representations about it.
I suspect the beginning of the end for Pip was the queue jumping.
I am not sure, however, this is a matter for politicians seeing they are hauling in ITV to interrogate them over it.
The Heil are going after him because culture wars. He is yet another TV leftie* who comes over all sanctimonious. Instead of telling people Common Sense things like "isn't Boris great" and "the police should reopen currygate", he sits there with his heart on his sleeve with "I am gay" and people being sympathetic to his deviance.
I honestly don't care about This Morning or Schofield. What he allegedly has done sounds a little *interestng* morally, but we all live in the same greenhouse armed with stones. What IS interesting is the reaction from the right, who are going after him like he is Rolf Harris. He isn't, but the Heil readership have been induced to be so judgemental that they're lapping it up.
*anyone who isn't a GBeebies presenter is a TV leftie
Sky have been leading on the Schofield story ad infinitum
I get the impression that Schofield might just have upset a few other people in the media in the past. Both in front of, and behind, the camera.
It's quite simple: what he did should have got him sacked much earlier than it did. It also highlights (sadly, yet again) a problem in the media, with the 'talent' abusing their position and power. And my goodness, the optics of it are terrible for him.
What's the overlap between the This Morning audience and the Mail's readership? I could imagine it being fairly substantial.
In which case, the Mail are doing one of the things good journalism does- finding about about something important in the lives of their readers. But also something bad journalism does- doing down a commercial rival (for advertising, if nothing else).
See also: newspaper crusades against WFH.
Cummings said that No.10 used to take phone calls at least weekly, from newspaper *proprietors*, about “The WFH Situation”. The largest audience for buying newspapers, being train commuters.
Less so of course the Guardian or Indy, or probably the Times, as so much is consumed online. I’d have thought the Mail is much more protected than most with its huge online business. The Telegraph on the other hand - vanishingly little online.
But then does the Telegraph have many commuting-age readers?
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
If you are taking driving lessons, is it misleading to say that you are learning to drive when you might not get as far as getting a licence?
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
It was never joining the EU. Attempting to do so while being a million miles from fulfilling the conditions of membership is nut the same thing at all. As was perfectly clear.
I fear this covid inquiry is going to be a massive ****-up. Too many people have already made up their minds either way, and will spend months and years examining in minute details decisions that ministers and others had hours or days to reach on imperfect data.
And whilst it will be used as a way to get at those who had to make decisions (rightly or wrongly), it will end up doing f-all to what we need it to do: to ensure we can improve our decision-making process if faced with such a situation in the future.
Best to just call the whole thing off then?
My view fwiw, is if there is a criticism it is it will take far too long to report.
Good morning
It appears that evidence will conclude in 2026 so it looks as if it could he 2027 or later before the final report
Kicking into touch comes to mind
A reminder of the true - albeit cynical - purpose of an inquiry.
An inquiry: A process by which an embarrassing story disappears from public view.
The long grass: Where recommendations usually end up. See also “Inquiry”
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
If you are taking driving lessons, is it misleading to say that you are learning to drive when you might not get as far as getting a licence?
By that analogy, shouldn't the poster have said Turkey is learning to join the EU? Or some other qualifier like aiming, wanting, etc?
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
If you are taking driving lessons, is it misleading to say that you are learning to drive when you might not get as far as getting a licence?
Turkey wasn't even at the 'taking lessons' stage. Just look at how far they'd progressed on the AQ since 2005:
"Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016."
What he wants, like pretty much everyone else involved in this or any other contentious issue, is "one set of approved opinions, those they agree with. Free speech for me but not for thee. But what this will soon become is free speech for no-one, not even me."
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
That's an excellent question, and the sort of thing an inquiry should get to the bottom of. My *guess* was that it was not just an 'app', but a heck of a lot of people and other things thrown in as well.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
It was never joining the EU. Attempting to do so while being a million miles from fulfilling the conditions of membership is nut the same thing at all. As was perfectly clear.
Actually Turkey did already fulfil some of the conditions of membership which is why its membership application process had already been formally accepted by the EU and been advanced already to the stage of transposing EU law as part of the Acquis negotiations which are part of the joining process. Anyone who is in the joining process, is joining, that is literally what the word means.
Now how long that stage takes is a matter of negotiations, could take a couple of years or it could take an indefinite amount of time, but Turkey were in the acquis stage already.
The EU themselves say that joining is not an overnight process and listed at the time Turkey and now Turkiye (and Ukraine etc) as nations on their page "joining the EU".
If this was the police, would "sorry its all on WhatsApp" get you off? They suspect you of fraud, you turn over emails and there is little there. They ask for your diary to see your movements but you say you can't as you don't have them. And everything else was on WhatsApp which is private and you can't have it.
I don't think so. WhatsApp is an audit trail. It is written. Documented. When the shit hits the fan everything that is written - or not written - is there for inspection. If you want to have off-the-record chats, don't do it in writing.
We already know there is fire. 9 figure contracts. Awarded without tender. To a company days old. Who have no knowledge of PPE. Who then order it from Ali Express. Which is unusable when delivered. But the money is paid anyway. And then the director tries to strike off the business without ever filing any accounts.
If we can't investigate that - and its not a singular example - then what is the point in anything? We may as well just have a Tory tax where we pay a tythe to the people who own the Tory party.
All of this is right. However it should be under criminal investigation.
The purpose of the inquiry is not about finding crimes, its to see what happened, what went went, what went badly and what we should do in the future.
I am not arguing for a truth and reconcilliation style amnesty from prosecution. But if we want an accurate story there needs to be a sense of proportion about the evidence.
You can argue that contracts should not have been awarded on the fly to chums. I think that's pretty obvious. But you also need to take account of the situation at the time. The screaming from the media and the medics for PPE and the actions of our allies such as France. It would have been hard to ignore an offer of help.
The crime though is not going after those who failed to deliver but still have the money.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
It was never joining the EU. Attempting to do so while being a million miles from fulfilling the conditions of membership is nut the same thing at all. As was perfectly clear.
It was using the diplomacy of diplomats to get away with something dishonest. A claim that couldn't be rebutted without creating a storm.
The reality was that there were and are talks, but they were and are going nowhere. A Turkey that joined the EU would have been a very different creature to the one we have now. But diplomacy means not saying that out loud. It may be true, but the important thing is to keep talking.
In that sense, it was like the claim on That Blooming Bus. It could be just about said without being an absolute lie, but truth was distorted like a Dali painting. But the cost of rebutting it properly would have been too high.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
Also, there does seem to be a desperate attempt to blanket all of these deals together like they are all the same.
They are not.
It looks awful that Tory mates were awarded £107m contracts without tender. But if they actually delivered the PPE then they did at least do the job. And they made a fat profit? Meh - had the same fat profit been made by the proper PPE companies ignored by government we would have spent similar amounts.
No, the scandal is where mates were awarded these 9-figure contracts, delivered nothing, and took the money anyway. So that's our money, stolen, and nothing in return. Some of these spiv outfits are now hastily being wound up to avoid publishing accounts.
The right get *incensed* when a single mother gets too many social security payments. Yet when its billions they are only angry at those of us asking the questions.
If this was the police, would "sorry its all on WhatsApp" get you off? They suspect you of fraud, you turn over emails and there is little there. They ask for your diary to see your movements but you say you can't as you don't have them. And everything else was on WhatsApp which is private and you can't have it.
I don't think so. WhatsApp is an audit trail. It is written. Documented. When the shit hits the fan everything that is written - or not written - is there for inspection. If you want to have off-the-record chats, don't do it in writing.
We already know there is fire. 9 figure contracts. Awarded without tender. To a company days old. Who have no knowledge of PPE. Who then order it from Ali Express. Which is unusable when delivered. But the money is paid anyway. And then the director tries to strike off the business without ever filing any accounts.
If we can't investigate that - and its not a singular example - then what is the point in anything? We may as well just have a Tory tax where we pay a tythe to the people who own the Tory party.
All of this is right. However it should be under criminal investigation.
The purpose of the inquiry is not about finding crimes, its to see what happened, what went went, what went badly and what we should do in the future.
I am not arguing for a truth and reconcilliation style amnesty from prosecution. But if we want an accurate story there needs to be a sense of proportion about the evidence.
You can argue that contracts should not have been awarded on the fly to chums. I think that's pretty obvious. But you also need to take account of the situation at the time. The screaming from the media and the medics for PPE and the actions of our allies such as France. It would have been hard to ignore an offer of help.
The crime though is not going after those who failed to deliver but still have the money.
Arguably that makes it more important to hand over everything. After all, there will be no criminal consequences but only improved decision making.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
More whataboutery for a party I don't support. Back to the actual government. We did ignore the PPE companies - fairly heavy coverage during and after all this took place
Again, we bet the lives of the people on Matt Hancock's pub landlord and Lady Mone, amongst others. That isn't smart tactics even in a war. Basic question to ask them - how will you get this stuff? When the Answer is "Ali Express" then go there yourself - or with a company who actually knows what they were doing.
No wonder we received plane loads of unusable junk. Ali Express vendors must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
It's not 'whataboutery'. Those names are from a Labour press release, and are an indication that they would have made exactly the same sorts of decisions at that time. And I guess the Lib Dems would have been the same. Remember, the political pressure from the opposition was to get more PPE, not less.
So please tell me (or a Labour supporter can chip in if they want): what made Labour think "Issa Exchange Ltd" could supply PPE?
And BTW, whilst you no longer support Labour, you seem fairly strongly anti-Conservative. Which is fair enough, but don't pretend it's not a bias.
Edit: I assume this is the company they thought could supply PPE:
Meanwhile in the Mail: AI 'could wipe out humanity'
Any kind of intelligence would wipe out the Daily Mail... their coverage of This Morning is bordering on the ludicrous today.
I haven't been following it is detail because it like most DM stories is so puerile, but I can't help thinking that the Daily Mail obsession with this is just a thinly disguised excuse to cause outrage amongst it's largely homophobic readership
Schofield’s behaviour, however, has been awful.
As has that of ITV in how they dealt with it. Numerous people have come out of the woodwork, not with wisdom after the event, but to say they had made official complaints or representations about it.
I suspect the beginning of the end for Pip was the queue jumping.
I am not sure, however, this is a matter for politicians seeing they are hauling in ITV to interrogate them over it.
The Heil are going after him because culture wars. He is yet another TV leftie* who comes over all sanctimonious. Instead of telling people Common Sense things like "isn't Boris great" and "the police should reopen currygate", he sits there with his heart on his sleeve with "I am gay" and people being sympathetic to his deviance.
I honestly don't care about This Morning or Schofield. What he allegedly has done sounds a little *interestng* morally, but we all live in the same greenhouse armed with stones. What IS interesting is the reaction from the right, who are going after him like he is Rolf Harris. He isn't, but the Heil readership have been induced to be so judgemental that they're lapping it up.
*anyone who isn't a GBeebies presenter is a TV leftie
Sky have been leading on the Schofield story ad infinitum
I get the impression that Schofield might just have upset a few other people in the media in the past. Both in front of, and behind, the camera.
It's quite simple: what he did should have got him sacked much earlier than it did. It also highlights (sadly, yet again) a problem in the media, with the 'talent' abusing their position and power. And my goodness, the optics of it are terrible for him.
As I understand it, PS had an affair with a much younger man while married; this came out a year or so back but was batted away by his PR deflecting the story onto him being gay. I wonder if there was a feeling in the media that he'd got away with it, and so with the story coming round again the pile-on is all the greater.
I think there’s still more to be revealed (one doesn’t have to search
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
Johnson wanted to be PM. Wanted it so much he destroyed the careers of many others to make it happen.
If he didn't want the decision making that came with it, he shouldn't have done that.
It makes me wonder *why* he wanted the job, if he was not prepared to put in the work.
I think a lot want the fame and not put in the work and that is regardless of political views. I remember seeing a documentary many many years ago on the workings of the Work and Pensions Committee while Archie Kirkwood was chair. I was particularly interested because I liked Kirkwood.
What was notable was the way two different Tory MPs worked on the committee. One was a right winger with whom I had little in common. He appeared to put the hours in, look at the evidence and not be deflected by his own biases. He didn't seek publicity for his work. The other was someone whose views where akin to mine. She seemed to do little work, but just seeked publicity constantly. My views on both individuals changed after that. People you agree with can be rubbish at doing stuff and people you disagree with can do a good job regardless of their overlying views.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
If you are taking driving lessons, is it misleading to say that you are learning to drive when you might not get as far as getting a licence?
Turkey wasn't even at the 'taking lessons' stage. Just look at how far they'd progressed on the AQ since 2005:
"Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016."
Progress being slow is not the same as progress not being made or happening. If any had been opened then the process was underway, but 16 had already been opened so they were in that process. If you're in the process, then the -ing applies.
Progress was suspended after the attempted coup and associated crackdown in 2016 but that happened after the referendum so was not known about at the time.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
The focus on the Turkey question is completely out of proportion to its importance to the referendum. The British government's policy was to support Turkish accession and it was topical because of Merkel's recent negotiations which included the prospect of kickstarting the process again.
The Leave campaign just exploited the opportunity to highlight issues of control over immigration and the government saying one thing and doing another, but the idea that millions of people were conned into voting Leave because they were afraid of Turkey's imminent accession is ridiculous.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
That's an excellent question, and the sort of thing an inquiry should get to the bottom of. My *guess* was that it was not just an 'app', but a heck of a lot of people and other things thrown in as well.
Doesn't Track and Trace include all the testing sites and Covid tests?
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
The medical profession can be intensely conservative, especially in relation to new technology. There can be very good reasons for this (safety of both patient and staff), but also monetary and fiefdom ones.
I knew a tech company that was trying to get some diagnostic kit in use by the NHS, and it was not a pleasant experience for them.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
£37bn !!?!
Have the government admitted it cost that much?
That was the total cost - at one point in time, may have ended up higher - for all of test and trace. But mainly it was just for the testing, as HMG were very lacklustre on the tracing and isolating bits of the long-established method for controlling spread of an infectious disease.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
It was never joining the EU. Attempting to do so while being a million miles from fulfilling the conditions of membership is nut the same thing at all. As was perfectly clear.
It was using the diplomacy of diplomats to get away with something dishonest. A claim that couldn't be rebutted without creating a storm.
The reality was that there were and are talks, but they were and are going nowhere. A Turkey that joined the EU would have been a very different creature to the one we have now. But diplomacy means not saying that out loud. It may be true, but the important thing is to keep talking.
In that sense, it was like the claim on That Blooming Bus. It could be just about said without being an absolute lie, but truth was distorted like a Dali painting. But the cost of rebutting it properly would have been too high.
The fact that it couldn't be rebutted without causing a storm is actually quite significant to why we left. The French or German leaders have never had any qualms about casually making statements about Turkish accession that effectively bound the rest of the union. The British PM never had the same status in the EU.
The following year, Merkel did this purely for domestic electoral purposes:
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
If you are taking driving lessons, is it misleading to say that you are learning to drive when you might not get as far as getting a licence?
Turkey wasn't even at the 'taking lessons' stage. Just look at how far they'd progressed on the AQ since 2005:
"Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016."
Progress being slow is not the same as progress not being made or happening. If any had been opened then the process was underway, but 16 had already been opened so they were in that process. If you're in the process, then the -ing applies.
Progress was suspended after the attempted coup and associated crackdown in 2016 but that happened after the referendum so was not known about at the time.
It really doesn't. 'Joining' implies it will happen, when in reality there were a massive number of hoops for Turley to jump through - not the least being a vote of the other EU members...
'May join' would be acceptable IMO. 'Joining' is not.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
That's an excellent question, and the sort of thing an inquiry should get to the bottom of. My *guess* was that it was not just an 'app', but a heck of a lot of people and other things thrown in as well.
The app may have cost £37BN but, at least, the tests were free.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
£37bn !!?!
Have the government admitted it cost that much?
That includes every test the country ever conducted as far as I'm aware. Indeed when the free tests program was closed down there was some squealing on here and in the media that it should continue despite the fact that those tests were costing at the time a billion a month and were within that £37bn.
I wonder if our Beibheirli reckons we should never have conducted even a single Covid test? As that's the implication of using that £37bn figure like that.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
That's an excellent question, and the sort of thing an inquiry should get to the bottom of. My *guess* was that it was not just an 'app', but a heck of a lot of people and other things thrown in as well.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
More whataboutery for a party I don't support. Back to the actual government. We did ignore the PPE companies - fairly heavy coverage during and after all this took place
Again, we bet the lives of the people on Matt Hancock's pub landlord and Lady Mone, amongst others. That isn't smart tactics even in a war. Basic question to ask them - how will you get this stuff? When the Answer is "Ali Express" then go there yourself - or with a company who actually knows what they were doing.
No wonder we received plane loads of unusable junk. Ali Express vendors must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
It's not 'whataboutery'. Those names are from a Labour press release, and are an indication that they would have made exactly the same sorts of decisions at that time. And I guess the Lib Dems would have been the same. Remember, the political pressure from the opposition was to get more PPE, not less.
So please tell me (or a Labour supporter can chip in if they want): what made Labour think "Issa Exchange Ltd" could supply PPE?
And BTW, whilst you no longer support Labour, you seem fairly strongly anti-Conservative. Which is fair enough, but don't pretend it's not a bias.
Edit: I assume this is the company they thought could supply PPE:
What is interesting about the Labour list of PPE suppliers, is that it shows the same mentality concerning the world.
"If you just google, there's someone out there."
Those who know a bit about manufacturing, know that there is a long list of companies that claim they can provide anything.
A favourite is the Chinese company that claims to be able to deliver metric tons of dioxygen difluoride**.
Bit like the BritVolt thing - you don't need skills, or technology. Just "management".
**Tons of that would be insane. And probably require cordoning off the area for several miles. And arresting everyone involved - it would undoubtedly breach several international treaties on toxic materials.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
That's an excellent question, and the sort of thing an inquiry should get to the bottom of. My *guess* was that it was not just an 'app', but a heck of a lot of people and other things thrown in as well.
Doesn't Track and Trace include all the testing sites and Covid tests?
Yes, it is long since debunked that an app cost £37BN. A total budget which was not fully used.
However it is often trotted out, especially on twitter. Usually by FBPE types. It seems to have become accepted as fact by people looking to bash the govt.
What he wants, like pretty much everyone else involved in this or any other contentious issue, is "one set of approved opinions, those they agree with. Free speech for me but not for thee. But what this will soon become is free speech for no-one, not even me."
"Pretty much everyone" isn't true at all. It might be true of the loudest voices - but to believe that represents pretty much everyone is to fall into the kind of trap in a manner you would rightly decry in others.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
They don't believe it, but it makes good copy to say it.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
Joining is not misleading. It was an official accession country, accepted by the EU (like now Ukraine and unlike say Georgia) and listed on their own website as a nation that was in the process of joining the EU, which as they say is a complex process that does not happen overnight.
If joining the EU only referred to the date of accession, then it would happen overnight, but the EU explicitly say that is not the case.
Indeed if you go to the "joining EU" webpage of the EU's own website, Turkiye as its now called is still listed on that webpage.
Turkey has been going through a process to join. That does not mean it will pass that process. Do you honestly think Turkey is actually going to join the EU in the next 5 years… 10 years… 20 years? The political ad in question gave the impression that Turkey will definitely be a member of the EU, and imminently. Which is not the case.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
Because FBPE clowns on twitter regularly trot it out and it has become accepted as fact by people wanting to bash the govt or support strikers.
"You can't pay the nurses in rNHS a decent pay rise but you spent £37BN on an app that did not work."
If this was the police, would "sorry its all on WhatsApp" get you off? They suspect you of fraud, you turn over emails and there is little there. They ask for your diary to see your movements but you say you can't as you don't have them. And everything else was on WhatsApp which is private and you can't have it.
I don't think so. WhatsApp is an audit trail. It is written. Documented. When the shit hits the fan everything that is written - or not written - is there for inspection. If you want to have off-the-record chats, don't do it in writing.
We already know there is fire. 9 figure contracts. Awarded without tender. To a company days old. Who have no knowledge of PPE. Who then order it from Ali Express. Which is unusable when delivered. But the money is paid anyway. And then the director tries to strike off the business without ever filing any accounts.
If we can't investigate that - and its not a singular example - then what is the point in anything? We may as well just have a Tory tax where we pay a tythe to the people who own the Tory party.
All of this is right. However it should be under criminal investigation.
The purpose of the inquiry is not about finding crimes, its to see what happened, what went went, what went badly and what we should do in the future.
I am not arguing for a truth and reconcilliation style amnesty from prosecution. But if we want an accurate story there needs to be a sense of proportion about the evidence.
You can argue that contracts should not have been awarded on the fly to chums. I think that's pretty obvious. But you also need to take account of the situation at the time. The screaming from the media and the medics for PPE and the actions of our allies such as France. It would have been hard to ignore an offer of help.
The crime though is not going after those who failed to deliver but still have the money.
Arguably that makes it more important to hand over everything. After all, there will be no criminal consequences but only improved decision making.
Except that ignores the vitriol and anger waiting to be poured over the government. Any whiff of something and the lynch mob will start.
I get it - I am incredibly lucky that no-one in my family died, or was refused a last hug in hospital. There is huge anger about things like that. Many people (wrongly I think) blame the government for all those who died (which is bonkers - our death rates are similar to other western nations).
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
It was never joining the EU. Attempting to do so while being a million miles from fulfilling the conditions of membership is nut the same thing at all. As was perfectly clear.
Actually Turkey did already fulfil some of the conditions of membership which is why its membership application process had already been formally accepted by the EU and been advanced already to the stage of transposing EU law as part of the Acquis negotiations which are part of the joining process. Anyone who is in the joining process, is joining, that is literally what the word means.
Now how long that stage takes is a matter of negotiations, could take a couple of years or it could take an indefinite amount of time, but Turkey were in the acquis stage already.
The EU themselves say that joining is not an overnight process and listed at the time Turkey and now Turkiye (and Ukraine etc) as nations on their page "joining the EU".
...Just look at how far they'd progressed on the AQ since 2005:
"Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016."
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
They don't believe it, but it makes good copy to say it.
It's a function of low numerical literacy. Many people don't seem to have any idea of scale, or the difference between a periodic and total budget.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
If you are taking driving lessons, is it misleading to say that you are learning to drive when you might not get as far as getting a licence?
Turkey wasn't even at the 'taking lessons' stage. Just look at how far they'd progressed on the AQ since 2005:
"Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016."
Progress being slow is not the same as progress not being made or happening. If any had been opened then the process was underway, but 16 had already been opened so they were in that process. If you're in the process, then the -ing applies.
Progress was suspended after the attempted coup and associated crackdown in 2016 but that happened after the referendum so was not known about at the time.
It really doesn't. 'Joining' implies it will happen, when in reality there were a massive number of hoops for Turley to jump through - not the least being a vote of the other EU members...
'May join' would be acceptable IMO. 'Joining' is not.
The EU themselves at the time were saying it should happen and had accepted Turkey into the joining process, which was not at the time suspended.
Both Angela Merkel and David Cameron had spoken then recently and positively about accelerating the Acquis part of the joining process.
So joining was acceptable. The idea that Merkel and Cameron were speaking positively about accelerating the joining the process, but intended to veto the application later on, certainly implies dishonesty but not from the people who made the advert.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
More whataboutery for a party I don't support. Back to the actual government. We did ignore the PPE companies - fairly heavy coverage during and after all this took place
Again, we bet the lives of the people on Matt Hancock's pub landlord and Lady Mone, amongst others. That isn't smart tactics even in a war. Basic question to ask them - how will you get this stuff? When the Answer is "Ali Express" then go there yourself - or with a company who actually knows what they were doing.
No wonder we received plane loads of unusable junk. Ali Express vendors must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
It's not 'whataboutery'. Those names are from a Labour press release, and are an indication that they would have made exactly the same sorts of decisions at that time. And I guess the Lib Dems would have been the same. Remember, the political pressure from the opposition was to get more PPE, not less.
So please tell me (or a Labour supporter can chip in if they want): what made Labour think "Issa Exchange Ltd" could supply PPE?
And BTW, whilst you no longer support Labour, you seem fairly strongly anti-Conservative. Which is fair enough, but don't pretend it's not a bias.
Edit: I assume this is the company they thought could supply PPE:
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
That's an excellent question, and the sort of thing an inquiry should get to the bottom of. My *guess* was that it was not just an 'app', but a heck of a lot of people and other things thrown in as well.
Doesn't Track and Trace include all the testing sites and Covid tests?
Yes, it is long since debunked that an app cost £37BN. A total budget which was not fully used.
However it is often trotted out, especially on twitter. Usually by FBPE types. It seems to have become accepted as fact by people looking to bash the govt.
Maybe we should have a fair, open, and prompt public enquiry to clarify any such misunderstandings?
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
That's an excellent question, and the sort of thing an inquiry should get to the bottom of. My *guess* was that it was not just an 'app', but a heck of a lot of people and other things thrown in as well.
Doesn't Track and Trace include all the testing sites and Covid tests?
Yes. This lie about it drives me nuts. There is lots to criticise, but this attribution of 37 billion to the ap is bonkers.
Meanwhile in the Mail: AI 'could wipe out humanity'
Any kind of intelligence would wipe out the Daily Mail... their coverage of This Morning is bordering on the ludicrous today.
I haven't been following it is detail because it like most DM stories is so puerile, but I can't help thinking that the Daily Mail obsession with this is just a thinly disguised excuse to cause outrage amongst it's largely homophobic readership
Schofield’s behaviour, however, has been awful.
As has that of ITV in how they dealt with it. Numerous people have come out of the woodwork, not with wisdom after the event, but to say they had made official complaints or representations about it.
I suspect the beginning of the end for Pip was the queue jumping.
I am not sure, however, this is a matter for politicians seeing they are hauling in ITV to interrogate them over it.
The Heil are going after him because culture wars. He is yet another TV leftie* who comes over all sanctimonious. Instead of telling people Common Sense things like "isn't Boris great" and "the police should reopen currygate", he sits there with his heart on his sleeve with "I am gay" and people being sympathetic to his deviance.
I honestly don't care about This Morning or Schofield. What he allegedly has done sounds a little *interestng* morally, but we all live in the same greenhouse armed with stones. What IS interesting is the reaction from the right, who are going after him like he is Rolf Harris. He isn't, but the Heil readership have been induced to be so judgemental that they're lapping it up.
*anyone who isn't a GBeebies presenter is a TV leftie
The influence of the Mail had dropped to insignificance. Those still reading it have have their opinions set in stone and thanks to some pretty poor management their influence in leading other more significant media has also dropped. They're now just preaching to the choir
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
More whataboutery for a party I don't support. Back to the actual government. We did ignore the PPE companies - fairly heavy coverage during and after all this took place
Again, we bet the lives of the people on Matt Hancock's pub landlord and Lady Mone, amongst others. That isn't smart tactics even in a war. Basic question to ask them - how will you get this stuff? When the Answer is "Ali Express" then go there yourself - or with a company who actually knows what they were doing.
No wonder we received plane loads of unusable junk. Ali Express vendors must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
It's not 'whataboutery'. Those names are from a Labour press release, and are an indication that they would have made exactly the same sorts of decisions at that time. And I guess the Lib Dems would have been the same. Remember, the political pressure from the opposition was to get more PPE, not less.
So please tell me (or a Labour supporter can chip in if they want): what made Labour think "Issa Exchange Ltd" could supply PPE?
And BTW, whilst you no longer support Labour, you seem fairly strongly anti-Conservative. Which is fair enough, but don't pretend it's not a bias.
Edit: I assume this is the company they thought could supply PPE:
What is interesting about the Labour list of PPE suppliers, is that it shows the same mentality concerning the world.
"If you just google, there's someone out there."
Those who know a bit about manufacturing, know that there is a long list of companies that claim they can provide anything.
A favourite is the Chinese company that claims to be able to deliver metric tons of dioxygen difluoride**.
Bit like the BritVolt thing - you don't need skills, or technology. Just "management".
**Tons of that would be insane. And probably require cordoning off the area for several miles. And arresting everyone involved - it would undoubtedly breach several international treaties on toxic materials.
The whole Britishvolt fiasco and the HS2 fiasco really makes me concerned with govt and opposition plans to start dipping into peoples pension pots to fund the UK economy.
If the UK was an attractive place to invest it would already be happening
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Stockpiling should involve rotation of kit in and out of storage, not filling a warehouse and hoping everything still works ten years from now (cf the Russian military, and quite possibly our own).
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
£37bn !!?!
Have the government admitted it cost that much?
That was the total cost - at one point in time, may have ended up higher - for all of test and trace. But mainly it was just for the testing, as HMG were very lacklustre on the tracing and isolating bits of the long-established method for controlling spread of an infectious disease.
Slightly unfair. Most infectious disease tracing takes place for disease where you are only contagious with symptoms, and is handled by local authorities. Covid was spreading by asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
Joining is not misleading. It was an official accession country, accepted by the EU (like now Ukraine and unlike say Georgia) and listed on their own website as a nation that was in the process of joining the EU, which as they say is a complex process that does not happen overnight.
If joining the EU only referred to the date of accession, then it would happen overnight, but the EU explicitly say that is not the case.
Indeed if you go to the "joining EU" webpage of the EU's own website, Turkiye as its now called is still listed on that webpage.
Turkey has been going through a process to join. That does not mean it will pass that process. Do you honestly think Turkey is actually going to join the EU in the next 5 years… 10 years… 20 years? The political ad in question gave the impression that Turkey will definitely be a member of the EU, and imminently. Which is not the case.
At the time did I honestly think Turkey would join the EU in the foreseeable future? Yes, absolutely, and I certainly hoped it would too. And had we remained in the EU, I'd have continued to hope they'd join as I did at the time.
Remember this is in 2016 prior to the attempted coup, crackdown against democracy and turn towards autocracy that has happened since. And at the time the recent news from both Angela Merkel and David Cameron and others had all been about positive steps to accelerate the Acquis process.
I take what Merkel and Cameron were saying at face value and do not believe they were lying, so I don't think this is a lie. If you're saying this is a lie, because Merkel and Cameron were lying, then who is responsible?
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
More whataboutery for a party I don't support. Back to the actual government. We did ignore the PPE companies - fairly heavy coverage during and after all this took place
Again, we bet the lives of the people on Matt Hancock's pub landlord and Lady Mone, amongst others. That isn't smart tactics even in a war. Basic question to ask them - how will you get this stuff? When the Answer is "Ali Express" then go there yourself - or with a company who actually knows what they were doing.
No wonder we received plane loads of unusable junk. Ali Express vendors must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
It's not 'whataboutery'. Those names are from a Labour press release, and are an indication that they would have made exactly the same sorts of decisions at that time. And I guess the Lib Dems would have been the same. Remember, the political pressure from the opposition was to get more PPE, not less.
So please tell me (or a Labour supporter can chip in if they want): what made Labour think "Issa Exchange Ltd" could supply PPE?
And BTW, whilst you no longer support Labour, you seem fairly strongly anti-Conservative. Which is fair enough, but don't pretend it's not a bias.
Edit: I assume this is the company they thought could supply PPE:
Due diligence was the responsibility of the government, not Labour, or for that matter Conservative MPs passing on names.
I refer you to my previous post. Labour used those companies as a weapon against the government; it's only fair to point out that one of them appears as (more?) interesting than the ones Labour are complaining about the government using.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
The test kits were more than likely cost effective (though the ability to acquire such things without granting massive profit margins to middle men is something we should develop). Track and trace was a huge waste of money - and obviously so long before it was closed down.
What's the betting that when the report is delivered in some point in the distant future (much delayed and over budget), it will include the phrase "Lessons will be learnt"?
To save time -
An inquiry: A process by which an embarrassing story disappears from public view.
A report: What a person who had nothing to with the original events has to present to Parliament and/or the media many years later. See the Savile Inquiry Report.
Peerage: what the author of a report producing a satisfactory outcome for those commissioning it gets, entirely coincidentally, after the report has been finished.
Conclusions: Usually written before the inquiry has heard any evidence.
Recommendations: What you find, if you read that far, in the Appendices to a report.
Working group: A group of people unable to avoid being tasked with the responsibility of coming up with suggestions as to how recommendations might be implemented.
The long grass: Where recommendations usually end up. See also “Inquiry”
Lack of resources: The best reason yet invented for not implementing any difficult recommendations.
Lessons learned: Lessons which are never learned by those who need to learn them.
“This must never happen again” – “This must never happen again during my term of office, at least not before I resign/retire and draw my gold-plated, index-linked, final salary pension or move onto an even more well-paid position.”
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
More whataboutery for a party I don't support. Back to the actual government. We did ignore the PPE companies - fairly heavy coverage during and after all this took place
Again, we bet the lives of the people on Matt Hancock's pub landlord and Lady Mone, amongst others. That isn't smart tactics even in a war. Basic question to ask them - how will you get this stuff? When the Answer is "Ali Express" then go there yourself - or with a company who actually knows what they were doing.
No wonder we received plane loads of unusable junk. Ali Express vendors must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
It's not 'whataboutery'. Those names are from a Labour press release, and are an indication that they would have made exactly the same sorts of decisions at that time. And I guess the Lib Dems would have been the same. Remember, the political pressure from the opposition was to get more PPE, not less.
So please tell me (or a Labour supporter can chip in if they want): what made Labour think "Issa Exchange Ltd" could supply PPE?
And BTW, whilst you no longer support Labour, you seem fairly strongly anti-Conservative. Which is fair enough, but don't pretend it's not a bias.
Edit: I assume this is the company they thought could supply PPE:
What is interesting about the Labour list of PPE suppliers, is that it shows the same mentality concerning the world.
"If you just google, there's someone out there."
Those who know a bit about manufacturing, know that there is a long list of companies that claim they can provide anything.
A favourite is the Chinese company that claims to be able to deliver metric tons of dioxygen difluoride**.
Bit like the BritVolt thing - you don't need skills, or technology. Just "management".
**Tons of that would be insane. And probably require cordoning off the area for several miles. And arresting everyone involved - it would undoubtedly breach several international treaties on toxic materials.
The whole Britishvolt fiasco and the HS2 fiasco really makes me concerned with govt and opposition plans to start dipping into peoples pension pots to fund the UK economy.
If the UK was an attractive place to invest it would already be happening
Overtaxed and overegulated.
Investment in Britain is already happening, in the shape of foreign companies (and governments) buying British firms and taking their IP, profits and jobs overseas.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
That's an excellent question, and the sort of thing an inquiry should get to the bottom of. My *guess* was that it was not just an 'app', but a heck of a lot of people and other things thrown in as well.
Doesn't Track and Trace include all the testing sites and Covid tests?
Yes, it is long since debunked that an app cost £37BN. A total budget which was not fully used.
However it is often trotted out, especially on twitter. Usually by FBPE types. It seems to have become accepted as fact by people looking to bash the govt.
Maybe we should have a fair, open, and prompt public enquiry to clarify any such misunderstandings?
It has already been debunked. Multiple times. I doubt the public enquiry will change people still believing it to be true.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
The test kits were more than likely cost effective (though the ability to acquire such things without granting massive profit margins to middle men is something we should develop). Track and trace was a huge waste of money - and obviously so long before it was closed down.
I'm less sure about that. There was a problem with a lab that did a lot of testing in the SW. Lots of false negatives, so people out and about who were positive, assuming they were negative. This led to a surge in cases.
I think test and trace did actually suppress things a bit. It was never able to shut it down completely (for many reasons) but I think there was an effect.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
.................Plus £40 billion a year for Brexit plus £33 billion for three weeks of the Truss/Kwarteng Combo =£110 billion. How about 60 new hospitals an aircraft carrier and a rail system that works?
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
If you are taking driving lessons, is it misleading to say that you are learning to drive when you might not get as far as getting a licence?
Turkey wasn't even at the 'taking lessons' stage. Just look at how far they'd progressed on the AQ since 2005:
"Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016."
Progress being slow is not the same as progress not being made or happening. If any had been opened then the process was underway, but 16 had already been opened so they were in that process. If you're in the process, then the -ing applies.
Progress was suspended after the attempted coup and associated crackdown in 2016 but that happened after the referendum so was not known about at the time.
It really doesn't. 'Joining' implies it will happen, when in reality there were a massive number of hoops for Turley to jump through - not the least being a vote of the other EU members...
'May join' would be acceptable IMO. 'Joining' is not.
Joining is a marathon, not a sprint.
If someone says, "I'm running the London marathon," it does imply they are committed to get to the starting line, and you might feel deceived if they haven't even applied, but even if they turn up on the day and start the race, finishing is another matter.
The starting line in EU terms is the opening of the acquis accession chapters. Turkey was in the race and despite getting into trouble, had various people offering a helping hand to reach the finish line.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Stockpiling should involve rotation of kit in and out of storage, not filling a warehouse and hoping everything still works ten years from now (cf the Russian military, and quite possibly our own).
That should be one of the very first recommendations, and is likely one that’s already been put into practice by the NHS.
Anyone keeping emergency stockpiles of anything, should make sure that they remain serviceable and are inspected regularly.
For things like medical PPE, the stockpiles themselves should be at least one year’s supply *in the emergency scenario*, which means a lot of rotation. Domestic manufacturers should also be identified, and contracted in advance to switch production on request.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
The test kits were more than likely cost effective (though the ability to acquire such things without granting massive profit margins to middle men is something we should develop). Track and trace was a huge waste of money - and obviously so long before it was closed down.
I'm less sure about that. There was a problem with a lab that did a lot of testing in the SW. Lots of false negatives, so people out and about who were positive, assuming they were negative. This led to a surge in cases.
I think test and trace did actually suppress things a bit. It was never able to shut it down completely (for many reasons) but I think there was an effect.
There was an argument for it early in the pandemic. Once lateral flow tests were readily available, and more was known about Covid, it was clearly a waste if money.
It's not a simple matter, and different future pandemics might require different responses. It would be a positive aspect of the enquiry if it were to tease out the complexities. Though if course the technologies now available - including cheap in the field sequencing - will change how to plan for future responses.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Stockpiling should involve rotation of kit in and out of storage, not filling a warehouse and hoping everything still works ten years from now (cf the Russian military, and quite possibly our own).
The problem with rotation is the quantities involved.
From memory the UK was going through more stock of PPE per week than it would normally go through per year in normal circumstances. So how do you logistically rotate that?
So even if you rotate perfectly, you either need stuff stockpiled for ten years in normal circumstances, or you are going to run out of PPE within ten weeks.
That's why realistically if we're to have a usable stockpile that can get us through a pandemic, we need stocks that can be stored in a warehouse for years. Because we simply don't need that volume in normal circumstances.
Meanwhile in the Mail: AI 'could wipe out humanity'
Any kind of intelligence would wipe out the Daily Mail... their coverage of This Morning is bordering on the ludicrous today.
I haven't been following it is detail because it like most DM stories is so puerile, but I can't help thinking that the Daily Mail obsession with this is just a thinly disguised excuse to cause outrage amongst it's largely homophobic readership
Schofield’s behaviour, however, has been awful.
As has that of ITV in how they dealt with it. Numerous people have come out of the woodwork, not with wisdom after the event, but to say they had made official complaints or representations about it.
I suspect the beginning of the end for Pip was the queue jumping.
I am not sure, however, this is a matter for politicians seeing they are hauling in ITV to interrogate them over it.
The Heil are going after him because culture wars. He is yet another TV leftie* who comes over all sanctimonious. Instead of telling people Common Sense things like "isn't Boris great" and "the police should reopen currygate", he sits there with his heart on his sleeve with "I am gay" and people being sympathetic to his deviance.
I honestly don't care about This Morning or Schofield. What he allegedly has done sounds a little *interestng* morally, but we all live in the same greenhouse armed with stones. What IS interesting is the reaction from the right, who are going after him like he is Rolf Harris. He isn't, but the Heil readership have been induced to be so judgemental that they're lapping it up.
*anyone who isn't a GBeebies presenter is a TV leftie
The influence of the Mail had dropped to insignificance. Those still reading it have have their opinions set in stone and thanks to some pretty poor management their influence in leading other more significant media has also dropped. They're now just preaching to the choir
That's like most advertising. Left alone, stones can crumble.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Stockpiling should involve rotation of kit in and out of storage, not filling a warehouse and hoping everything still works ten years from now (cf the Russian military, and quite possibly our own).
The problem is that this stuff doesn't really stockpile well. See the French experience with PPE from their warehouses.
The traditional view of non-disposable kit was that it is
1) heavy 2) hard to clean 3) obstructs hearing and vision 4) hot 5) Doesn't fit well to some people
Better materials mean that 1) has gone away.
2) has been dealt with by a combination of better materials for the equipment and the cleaning solutions. Truly waterproof electronics mean that such components can just be dunked in the cleaning solution, as well
3) Improvements in casting plastic mean that clear visors with anti-fogging are standard. Hearing can be augmented by electronic systems or the better solutions to 5) can mean a face dam that actually works.
4) Blown air from a belt mounted device is a simple, standard solution. This actually makes the equipment feel air-conditioned in summer heat. Or when welding!
5) Scan and 3D print of the parts that actually touch the face etc is known, implemented solution. This is then clipped onto the main equipment.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
Joining is not misleading. It was an official accession country, accepted by the EU (like now Ukraine and unlike say Georgia) and listed on their own website as a nation that was in the process of joining the EU, which as they say is a complex process that does not happen overnight.
If joining the EU only referred to the date of accession, then it would happen overnight, but the EU explicitly say that is not the case.
Indeed if you go to the "joining EU" webpage of the EU's own website, Turkiye as its now called is still listed on that webpage.
Turkey has been going through a process to join. That does not mean it will pass that process. Do you honestly think Turkey is actually going to join the EU in the next 5 years… 10 years… 20 years? The political ad in question gave the impression that Turkey will definitely be a member of the EU, and imminently. Which is not the case.
At the time did I honestly think Turkey would join the EU in the foreseeable future? Yes, absolutely, and I certainly hoped it would too. And had we remained in the EU, I'd have continued to hope they'd join as I did at the time.
Remember this is in 2016 prior to the attempted coup, crackdown against democracy and turn towards autocracy that has happened since. And at the time the recent news from both Angela Merkel and David Cameron and others had all been about positive steps to accelerate the Acquis process.
I take what Merkel and Cameron were saying at face value and do not believe they were lying, so I don't think this is a lie. If you're saying this is a lie, because Merkel and Cameron were lying, then who is responsible?
It was a political masterstroke from the Leave campaign. At the time, there was a massive refugee problem in Syria, and the EU wanted to see Turkey as the buffer state.
If Cameron had tried to deny that Turkey was joining the EU, it would have a massive diplomatic faux pas, as the official line was that everyone was working towards Turkish accession. Which is why he was furious that the subject even came up, and gave an answer remarkably like we now see from Starmer and Davey when asked to define “woman”.
What's the betting that when the report is delivered in some point in the distant future (much delayed and over budget), it will include the phrase "Lessons will be learnt"?
To save time -
An inquiry: A process by which an embarrassing story disappears from public view.
A report: What a person who had nothing to with the original events has to present to Parliament and/or the media many years later. See the Savile Inquiry Report.
Peerage: what the author of a report producing a satisfactory outcome for those commissioning it gets, entirely coincidentally, after the report has been finished.
Conclusions: Usually written before the inquiry has heard any evidence.
Recommendations: What you find, if you read that far, in the Appendices to a report.
Working group: A group of people unable to avoid being tasked with the responsibility of coming up with suggestions as to how recommendations might be implemented.
The long grass: Where recommendations usually end up. See also “Inquiry”
Lack of resources: The best reason yet invented for not implementing any difficult recommendations.
Lessons learned: Lessons which are never learned by those who need to learn them.
“This must never happen again” – “This must never happen again during my term of office, at least not before I resign/retire and draw my gold-plated, index-linked, final salary pension or move onto an even more well-paid position.”
Sometimes expressed as The Phases of The Project
1) Enthusiasm 2) Disillusionment 3) Panic and hysteria 4) Search for the guilty 5) Punishment of the innocent 6) Praise and honour for the nonparticipants
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Stockpiling should involve rotation of kit in and out of storage, not filling a warehouse and hoping everything still works ten years from now (cf the Russian military, and quite possibly our own).
That should be one of the very first recommendations, and is likely one that’s already been put into practice by the NHS.
Anyone keeping emergency stockpiles of anything, should make sure that they remain serviceable and are inspected regularly.
For things like medical PPE, the stockpiles themselves should be at least one year’s supply *in the emergency scenario*, which means a lot of rotation. Domestic manufacturers should also be identified, and contracted in advance to switch production on request.
I don't have the figure at hand, but ISTR that PPE usage went up tenfold at the start of the pandemic. So a year's stockpile would have lasted five weeks. Useful, but it would still have required a immediate *massive* procurement process.
David Cameron today challenges France and Germany over their opposition to Turkish membership of the EU when he issues a stark warning of the dangers of shutting Ankara "out of the club".
In a passionate defence of Turkey, whose EU ambitions have long been championed by Britain, the prime minister will accuse Paris and Berlin of double standards for expecting Ankara to guard Europe's borders as a Nato member while closing the door to EU membership.
"When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a Nato ally, and what Turkey is doing today in Afghanistan alongside our European allies, it makes me angry that your progress towards EU membership can be frustrated in the way it has been," the prime minister will say in a speech in the Turkish capital.
"I believe it's just wrong to say Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit inside the tent."
The new Australia and New Zealand trade deals kick in today .
Ironically ministers are highlighting the youth mobility schemes and working holiday maker visa schemes .
So it’s now easier for young people to go to those countries than to the EU .
Surely those schemes would work with the EU aswell , this would help hospitality in the UK and at least give a chance to younger people to claw back some of their freedom which they lost because of Brexit.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
Joining is not misleading. It was an official accession country, accepted by the EU (like now Ukraine and unlike say Georgia) and listed on their own website as a nation that was in the process of joining the EU, which as they say is a complex process that does not happen overnight.
If joining the EU only referred to the date of accession, then it would happen overnight, but the EU explicitly say that is not the case.
Indeed if you go to the "joining EU" webpage of the EU's own website, Turkiye as its now called is still listed on that webpage.
Turkey has been going through a process to join. That does not mean it will pass that process. Do you honestly think Turkey is actually going to join the EU in the next 5 years… 10 years… 20 years? The political ad in question gave the impression that Turkey will definitely be a member of the EU, and imminently. Which is not the case.
At the time did I honestly think Turkey would join the EU in the foreseeable future? Yes, absolutely, and I certainly hoped it would too. And had we remained in the EU, I'd have continued to hope they'd join as I did at the time.
Remember this is in 2016 prior to the attempted coup, crackdown against democracy and turn towards autocracy that has happened since. And at the time the recent news from both Angela Merkel and David Cameron and others had all been about positive steps to accelerate the Acquis process.
I take what Merkel and Cameron were saying at face value and do not believe they were lying, so I don't think this is a lie. If you're saying this is a lie, because Merkel and Cameron were lying, then who is responsible?
It was a political masterstroke from the Leave campaign. At the time, there was a massive refugee problem in Syria, and the EU wanted to see Turkey as the buffer state.
If Cameron had tried to deny that Turkey was joining the EU, it would have a massive diplomatic faux pas, as the official line was that everyone was working towards Turkish accession. Which is why he was furious that the subject even came up, and gave an answer remarkably like we now from Starmer and Davey when asked to define “woman”.
- Can Turkey be a European country? - If it transitions and goes through the process of being legally recognised...
What he wants, like pretty much everyone else involved in this or any other contentious issue, is "one set of approved opinions, those they agree with. Free speech for me but not for thee. But what this will soon become is free speech for no-one, not even me."
"Pretty much everyone" isn't true at all. It might be true of the loudest voices - but to believe that represents pretty much everyone is to fall into the kind of trap in a manner you would rightly decry in others.
I see surprisingly few people in the political establishment or other institutions willing to stand up for free speech even for people they disagree with. The current government is deliberately excluding those who criticise them. Labour and the Lib Dems are silent. As for the SNP .....
But please give examples to prove me wrong. I would love to see a full-hearted defence of free speech and free expression by people in the public eye accompanied by actions consistent with what they say.
The new Australia and New Zealand trade deals kick in today .
Ironically ministers are highlighting the youth mobility schemes and working holiday maker visa schemes .
So it’s now easier for young people to go to those countries than to the EU .
Surely those schemes would work with the EU aswell , this would help hospitality in the UK and at least give a chance to younger people to claw back some of their freedom which they lost because of Brexit.
Its fantastic news isn't it? A real Brexit dividend.
And it will give younger people more freedom than they had pre-Brexit.
It is worth remembering that even when we had free movement more British expats emigrated to Australia than the entire EU combined, excluding Ireland for whom free movement continues under the Common Travel Area anyway.
Anything that makes travel with Australia and New Zealand better and easier is more useful for Britons than free movement with Europe.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
If you are taking driving lessons, is it misleading to say that you are learning to drive when you might not get as far as getting a licence?
Turkey wasn't even at the 'taking lessons' stage. Just look at how far they'd progressed on the AQ since 2005:
"Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016."
Progress being slow is not the same as progress not being made or happening. If any had been opened then the process was underway, but 16 had already been opened so they were in that process. If you're in the process, then the -ing applies.
Progress was suspended after the attempted coup and associated crackdown in 2016 but that happened after the referendum so was not known about at the time.
It really doesn't. 'Joining' implies it will happen, when in reality there were a massive number of hoops for Turley to jump through - not the least being a vote of the other EU members...
'May join' would be acceptable IMO. 'Joining' is not.
Joining is a marathon, not a sprint.
If someone says, "I'm running the London marathon," it does imply they are committed to get to the starting line, and you might feel deceived if they haven't even applied, but even if they turn up on the day and start the race, finishing is another matter.
The starting line in EU terms is the opening of the acquis accession chapters. Turkey was in the race and despite getting into trouble, had various people offering a helping hand to reach the finish line.
If you want to use that analogy, then Turkey left the race at the half-mile mark and went to the restaurant for a nice meze, kebab and baklava. They're then going to the cinema, and then on holiday. In the meantime, the organisers are keeping the course open for years, and occasionally yelling at Turkey that they should perhaps start running. And Greece and France are waiting a hundred metres from the finishing line to trip them up...
What's the betting that when the report is delivered in some point in the distant future (much delayed and over budget), it will include the phrase "Lessons will be learnt"?
To save time -
An inquiry: A process by which an embarrassing story disappears from public view.
A report: What a person who had nothing to with the original events has to present to Parliament and/or the media many years later. See the Savile Inquiry Report.
Peerage: what the author of a report producing a satisfactory outcome for those commissioning it gets, entirely coincidentally, after the report has been finished.
Conclusions: Usually written before the inquiry has heard any evidence.
Recommendations: What you find, if you read that far, in the Appendices to a report.
Working group: A group of people unable to avoid being tasked with the responsibility of coming up with suggestions as to how recommendations might be implemented.
The long grass: Where recommendations usually end up. See also “Inquiry”
Lack of resources: The best reason yet invented for not implementing any difficult recommendations.
Lessons learned: Lessons which are never learned by those who need to learn them.
“This must never happen again” – “This must never happen again during my term of office, at least not before I resign/retire and draw my gold-plated, index-linked, final salary pension or move onto an even more well-paid position.”
Sometimes expressed as The Phases of The Project
1) Enthusiasm 2) Disillusionment 3) Panic and hysteria 4) Search for the guilty 5) Punishment of the innocent 6) Praise and honour for the nonparticipants
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Stockpiling should involve rotation of kit in and out of storage, not filling a warehouse and hoping everything still works ten years from now (cf the Russian military, and quite possibly our own).
That should be one of the very first recommendations, and is likely one that’s already been put into practice by the NHS.
Anyone keeping emergency stockpiles of anything, should make sure that they remain serviceable and are inspected regularly.
For things like medical PPE, the stockpiles themselves should be at least one year’s supply *in the emergency scenario*, which means a lot of rotation. Domestic manufacturers should also be identified, and contracted in advance to switch production on request.
The problem is that a years supply of disposable PPE for a pandemic would be vastly greater than the amount required per year by the NHS in normal times.
So every year you would have to dispose of a huge pile of out of date PPE.
Other options that should be considered
1) Non-disposable PPE. This would have a higher capital cost, but would offer other things, such as resilience in a pandemic and the ability to have "kit" system that builds up to full airtight protection. 2) Manufacturing facilities for the PPE. Runs normally at x% of capacity. It has the raw materials for your years worth of PPE stored - they would need to be non-volatile precursors. Produces PPE for the NHS normally. Every now and then, as a practise, surges to full capacity.
Interesting thread on the success of British TERFs in shaping the debate: "The TERFs have been more successful in rolling back Le Woke than pretty much every other right-wing grifter combined."
Interesting thread on the success of British TERFs in shaping the debate: "The TERFs have been more successful in rolling back Le Woke than pretty much every other right-wing grifter combined."
Perhaps because they have an actual real point - the rights of women and the rights of trans do intersect. And requires mediation and compromise at that intersection. Just as when the rights of other groups intersect.
@williamglenn do you think this image is a lie or not?
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then it's not a lie and it was true that at the time, the prospect of accelerating the accession process was dangled before Turkey.
Even if you think it was never likely to happen, the ad was fair game for a political campaign. Cameron could have said he would veto it, but it didn't because it would have contradicted British policy.
If "is" can mean "is in the process of" then we are all dead.
"-ing" means in the process of so we are all dying, we are not all dead.
Do you say that a dead person is dying? No, a dead person is already dead, only living people are dying.
Turkey hadn't joined the EU. It was joining the EU. That is a matter of fact, joining is a process and it was in that process and was having rounds of accession talks and agreements with one taking place the week before the referendum.
Turkey was going through a process to try to join the EU. It was applying to join. But it hadn’t and has never had agreement that it definitely will join. Ergo, “joining” is misleading.
Joining is not misleading. It was an official accession country, accepted by the EU (like now Ukraine and unlike say Georgia) and listed on their own website as a nation that was in the process of joining the EU, which as they say is a complex process that does not happen overnight.
If joining the EU only referred to the date of accession, then it would happen overnight, but the EU explicitly say that is not the case.
Indeed if you go to the "joining EU" webpage of the EU's own website, Turkiye as its now called is still listed on that webpage.
Turkey has been going through a process to join. That does not mean it will pass that process. Do you honestly think Turkey is actually going to join the EU in the next 5 years… 10 years… 20 years? The political ad in question gave the impression that Turkey will definitely be a member of the EU, and imminently. Which is not the case.
At the time did I honestly think Turkey would join the EU in the foreseeable future? Yes, absolutely, and I certainly hoped it would too. And had we remained in the EU, I'd have continued to hope they'd join as I did at the time.
Remember this is in 2016 prior to the attempted coup, crackdown against democracy and turn towards autocracy that has happened since. And at the time the recent news from both Angela Merkel and David Cameron and others had all been about positive steps to accelerate the Acquis process.
I take what Merkel and Cameron were saying at face value and do not believe they were lying, so I don't think this is a lie. If you're saying this is a lie, because Merkel and Cameron were lying, then who is responsible?
It was a political masterstroke from the Leave campaign. At the time, there was a massive refugee problem in Syria, and the EU wanted to see Turkey as the buffer state.
If Cameron had tried to deny that Turkey was joining the EU, it would have a massive diplomatic faux pas, as the official line was that everyone was working towards Turkish accession. Which is why he was furious that the subject even came up, and gave an answer remarkably like we now see from Starmer and Davey when asked to define “woman”.
It was a masterstroke in using advertising without regulation. Political advertising has no rules. This wouldn't have got off a junior copywriters desk and he'd have been fired for being so stupid as to attempt it if it was for a product. There was an ad submitted for the Humanists Society which claimed that God didn't exist and it was rejected because they couldn't prove it.
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
They don't believe it, but it makes good copy to say it.
What's the betting that when the report is delivered in some point in the distant future (much delayed and over budget), it will include the phrase "Lessons will be learnt"?
To save time -
An inquiry: A process by which an embarrassing story disappears from public view.
A report: What a person who had nothing to with the original events has to present to Parliament and/or the media many years later. See the Savile Inquiry Report.
Peerage: what the author of a report producing a satisfactory outcome for those commissioning it gets, entirely coincidentally, after the report has been finished.
Conclusions: Usually written before the inquiry has heard any evidence.
Recommendations: What you find, if you read that far, in the Appendices to a report.
Working group: A group of people unable to avoid being tasked with the responsibility of coming up with suggestions as to how recommendations might be implemented.
The long grass: Where recommendations usually end up. See also “Inquiry”
Lack of resources: The best reason yet invented for not implementing any difficult recommendations.
Lessons learned: Lessons which are never learned by those who need to learn them.
“This must never happen again” – “This must never happen again during my term of office, at least not before I resign/retire and draw my gold-plated, index-linked, final salary pension or move onto an even more well-paid position.”
Sometimes expressed as The Phases of The Project
1) Enthusiasm 2) Disillusionment 3) Panic and hysteria 4) Search for the guilty 5) Punishment of the innocent 6) Praise and honour for the nonparticipants
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
They don't believe it, but it makes good copy to say it.
We should have worked harder for Turkey’s accession, for many of the reasons a certain former PM of part Turkish ancestry has given.
It’s a massive potential market, and source of Labour and skills as well as low cost manufacturing and shared services hub, while also opening up Turkic Central Asia to greater investment and access. Historically a core part of European and Mediterranean civilisation, from prehistory onwards. Would have brought it more closely into things like the EU sanctions regime on Russia. Would have forced closer adherence to rule of law and journalistic independence. Would probably have led to Cypriot reunification. Would have given the EU greater heft in trade disputes with the US. Would moderate China’s influence in Central Asia. Might have forced earlier resolution of Karabakh conflict in Azerbaijan, and so on.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Stockpiling should involve rotation of kit in and out of storage, not filling a warehouse and hoping everything still works ten years from now (cf the Russian military, and quite possibly our own).
That should be one of the very first recommendations, and is likely one that’s already been put into practice by the NHS.
Anyone keeping emergency stockpiles of anything, should make sure that they remain serviceable and are inspected regularly.
For things like medical PPE, the stockpiles themselves should be at least one year’s supply *in the emergency scenario*, which means a lot of rotation. Domestic manufacturers should also be identified, and contracted in advance to switch production on request.
The problem is that a years supply of disposable PPE for a pandemic would be vastly greater than the amount required per year by the NHS in normal times.
So every year you would have to dispose of a huge pile of out of date PPE.
Other options that should be considered
1) Non-disposable PPE. This would have a higher capital cost, but would offer other things, such as resilience in a pandemic and the ability to have "kit" system that builds up to full airtight protection. 2) Manufacturing facilities for the PPE. Runs normally at x% of capacity. It has the raw materials for your years worth of PPE stored - they would need to be non-volatile precursors. Produces PPE for the NHS normally. Every now and then, as a practise, surges to full capacity.
Good points. It may well be that it’s impractical to actually store sufficient PPE of the usual spec, in which case you either need to have a plan to dispose of it (international aid?), to change the spec of what’s stored so that it has a longer life, and/or to have strategic manufacturing ability on a retainer.
Didn’t Burberry make hospital gowns at one point, and the users said they were of much higher quality than usual?
My favourite pandemic story is the Mercedes F1 engine factory, that managed to churn out 10,000 reverse-engineered CPAP breathing machines in less than a month, and open-sourced the whole project down to the CAD drawings and CNC machine files. Dozens of other countries then picked up the project. Government planners should have agreements to work with such engineering companies, for the next time they might be useful. UK has a massive aerospace and motorsport industry that can be leaned on in an emergency.
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
More whataboutery for a party I don't support. Back to the actual government. We did ignore the PPE companies - fairly heavy coverage during and after all this took place
Again, we bet the lives of the people on Matt Hancock's pub landlord and Lady Mone, amongst others. That isn't smart tactics even in a war. Basic question to ask them - how will you get this stuff? When the Answer is "Ali Express" then go there yourself - or with a company who actually knows what they were doing.
No wonder we received plane loads of unusable junk. Ali Express vendors must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
It's not 'whataboutery'. Those names are from a Labour press release, and are an indication that they would have made exactly the same sorts of decisions at that time. And I guess the Lib Dems would have been the same. Remember, the political pressure from the opposition was to get more PPE, not less.
So please tell me (or a Labour supporter can chip in if they want): what made Labour think "Issa Exchange Ltd" could supply PPE?
And BTW, whilst you no longer support Labour, you seem fairly strongly anti-Conservative. Which is fair enough, but don't pretend it's not a bias.
Edit: I assume this is the company they thought could supply PPE:
What is interesting about the Labour list of PPE suppliers, is that it shows the same mentality concerning the world.
"If you just google, there's someone out there."
Those who know a bit about manufacturing, know that there is a long list of companies that claim they can provide anything.
A favourite is the Chinese company that claims to be able to deliver metric tons of dioxygen difluoride**.
Bit like the BritVolt thing - you don't need skills, or technology. Just "management".
**Tons of that would be insane. And probably require cordoning off the area for several miles. And arresting everyone involved - it would undoubtedly breach several international treaties on toxic materials.
The whole Britishvolt fiasco and the HS2 fiasco really makes me concerned with govt and opposition plans to start dipping into peoples pension pots to fund the UK economy.
If the UK was an attractive place to invest it would already be happening
Overtaxed and overegulated.
Investment in Britain is already happening, in the shape of foreign companies (and governments) buying British firms and taking their IP, profits and jobs overseas.
Indeed, so when Mr Johnson went on and Mr Sunak (or whoever) goes on, about investment in the UK, how much of it is that kind?
I would like to know how it cost £37bn for a phone app that did not work.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
FFS it didn't. Ever use a 'free' Covid test kit? That was from the 37 billion too. There are still people with hundreds of boxes of those kits in their houses. You could pick up two free boxes a day at the Uni and many did, every day, for months.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
They don't believe it, but it makes good copy to say it.
So, how much DID the app cost then?
Not £37 Billion. Don't believe everything on FBPE Twitter
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Stockpiling should involve rotation of kit in and out of storage, not filling a warehouse and hoping everything still works ten years from now (cf the Russian military, and quite possibly our own).
That should be one of the very first recommendations, and is likely one that’s already been put into practice by the NHS.
Anyone keeping emergency stockpiles of anything, should make sure that they remain serviceable and are inspected regularly.
For things like medical PPE, the stockpiles themselves should be at least one year’s supply *in the emergency scenario*, which means a lot of rotation. Domestic manufacturers should also be identified, and contracted in advance to switch production on request.
The problem is that a years supply of disposable PPE for a pandemic would be vastly greater than the amount required per year by the NHS in normal times.
So every year you would have to dispose of a huge pile of out of date PPE.
Other options that should be considered
1) Non-disposable PPE. This would have a higher capital cost, but would offer other things, such as resilience in a pandemic and the ability to have "kit" system that builds up to full airtight protection. 2) Manufacturing facilities for the PPE. Runs normally at x% of capacity. It has the raw materials for your years worth of PPE stored - they would need to be non-volatile precursors. Produces PPE for the NHS normally. Every now and then, as a practise, surges to full capacity.
Even the first aid kits that we hand out to our guys at work have a use by date on which is normally just 18 months from date of purchase.
What he wants, like pretty much everyone else involved in this or any other contentious issue, is "one set of approved opinions, those they agree with. Free speech for me but not for thee. But what this will soon become is free speech for no-one, not even me."
"Pretty much everyone" isn't true at all. It might be true of the loudest voices - but to believe that represents pretty much everyone is to fall into the kind of trap in a manner you would rightly decry in others.
I see surprisingly few people in the political establishment or other institutions willing to stand up for free speech even for people they disagree with. The current government is deliberately excluding those who criticise them. Labour and the Lib Dems are silent. As for the SNP .....
But please give examples to prove me wrong. I would love to see a full-hearted defence of free speech and free expression by people in the public eye accompanied by actions consistent with what they say.
For a start, I don't equate the political establishment with "pretty much everyone".
PPE contracts ? A digital paper trail might be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I would hope that any criticism other PPE contracts might also include lists of companies that MPs from other parties criticised the government for not taking. You know, for context.
We should not lose sight of exactly how desperate things were at the time.
People saying this ignore the fact that many of these sweetheart deals for mates were signed well after the initial wave panic.
And you keep on saying that, and you ignore that there were other panics as well: like, for instance, the later lockdowns.
The government was pretty much in panic from March 2020 to March 2021. As were all of us. We needed PPE. Which would have been okay, except virtually every other country in the world needed PPE.
So why - when mates rates fail to deliver usable PPE - do we not claw back the money? Any boiler plate contract for anything has clauses about delivery - unless you are a mate of a Tory minister.
I am not that bothered about the lining of pockets where actually usable PPE was delivered. I am bothered when it was not - and we paid anyway. They have stolen - and it is stolen as they did not fulfil the contract - YOUR money. And you are fine with it. Why is that?
We desperately needed PPE and were willing to try anything to get it - just look at some of the companies *Labour* politicians were asking us to use as an example. If we had used normal procurement channels we would still be waiting - and people like Dr Foxy would have been placed in more danger.
The nearest parallel is a war. We were in a war, and we had to make decisions fast, with massive competition worldwide for a limited resource. There was waste, and there were charlatans. But the primary need was to get the kit. And we did - in fact, we ended up with too much. True fraudsters should be prosecuted.
It'd be interesting to know the percentages of all of this: how much was spent; how much was delivered, how much was usable etc. I think I've seen it somewhere before, but cannot immediately find it.
As I've said all through this hideous mess - I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make the decisions.
We're largely in agreement. I want the fraudsters done over. And the people who enabled the fraudsters.
Your war analogy is interesting though. It was a war, and we had established generals (PPE companies) with a track record of fighting wars.
We ignored them. And rang our mate who had heard of war but never done it. And put him in charge of fighting our war.
I'm not voting Labour so the whataboutery doesn't work on me. The government ignored the actual PPE companies and bet our lives on Lady Mone and Matt Hancocks pub landlord...
Did we ignore the 'established' generals? I assume these were the 'generals' Labour were going on about?
In which case, I might ask how CQM Learning was an 'established general' in the PPE market. Or Issa Exchange Ltd (and those are just two from Labour's press release).
The latter looks particularly interesting if you look at their 202 accounts...
I am also interested in the fact that we have the exact same system we had before - bio degradable, expendable plastic. You can't stockpile it for too long - because it starts to disintegrate.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Stockpiling should involve rotation of kit in and out of storage, not filling a warehouse and hoping everything still works ten years from now (cf the Russian military, and quite possibly our own).
That should be one of the very first recommendations, and is likely one that’s already been put into practice by the NHS.
Anyone keeping emergency stockpiles of anything, should make sure that they remain serviceable and are inspected regularly.
For things like medical PPE, the stockpiles themselves should be at least one year’s supply *in the emergency scenario*, which means a lot of rotation. Domestic manufacturers should also be identified, and contracted in advance to switch production on request.
The problem is that a years supply of disposable PPE for a pandemic would be vastly greater than the amount required per year by the NHS in normal times.
So every year you would have to dispose of a huge pile of out of date PPE.
Other options that should be considered
1) Non-disposable PPE. This would have a higher capital cost, but would offer other things, such as resilience in a pandemic and the ability to have "kit" system that builds up to full airtight protection. 2) Manufacturing facilities for the PPE. Runs normally at x% of capacity. It has the raw materials for your years worth of PPE stored - they would need to be non-volatile precursors. Produces PPE for the NHS normally. Every now and then, as a practise, surges to full capacity.
Even the first aid kits that we hand out to our guys at work have a use by date on which is normally just 18 months from date of purchase.
Not very environmentally friendly is it?
A relative runs a building business. The comedy of having x number of green box kits on site… one time an inspecting type was banging on about he could only see x-1. The response was to open a cupboard.
Due to a delivery issue - it had gone to the site by mistake - there were over a hundred first aid kits in the cupboard.
Re the Covid inquiry, we seem to be in a scenario similar to Watergate, with the exception that after being told to release the tapes the President instead declared that he would do so if it weren't for the fact that they had been inexplicably lost.
Comments
Both sides were at it - I wasn’t so bothered about the misleading part, that’s how political campaigns work. The more problematic bit was the dark emotions this was deliberately trying to stir, with Syria and Iraq and arrows: only one small step removed from Farage’s breaking point poster.
Second poll from a different company gives another large lead for PP against PSOE but still no absolute majority without Vox.
9am.
You will find out.
https://twitter.com/secrettory12/status/1663534291970674688?s=20
If only there were a metaphor to express that in a pithy way. Should be a piece of cake to come up with one.
That is a much better argument than the claim about lies, which is just not true.
What was said was a matter of fact and record, that even the EU themselves say. The way it was portrayed was ugly, unpleasant and I don't like that. Something can be both true and portrayed in an ugly manner, but as you say that's how political campaigns work.
Again, we bet the lives of the people on Matt Hancock's pub landlord and Lady Mone, amongst others. That isn't smart tactics even in a war. Basic question to ask them - how will you get this stuff? When the Answer is "Ali Express" then go there yourself - or with a company who actually knows what they were doing.
No wonder we received plane loads of unusable junk. Ali Express vendors must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
But then does the Telegraph have many commuting-age readers?
Attempting to do so while being a million miles from fulfilling the conditions of membership is nut the same thing at all. As was perfectly clear.
An inquiry: A process by which an embarrassing story disappears from public view.
The long grass: Where recommendations usually end up. See also “Inquiry”
https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/the-cynics-dictionary/
See also all the other inquiries currently going on.
That is enough to build 44 Type 26 frigates... (£4.2bn for 5 of them according to gov.uk)
"Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union#Negotiation_progress
https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/whose-free-speech/
Now how long that stage takes is a matter of negotiations, could take a couple of years or it could take an indefinite amount of time, but Turkey were in the acquis stage already.
The EU themselves say that joining is not an overnight process and listed at the time Turkey and now Turkiye (and Ukraine etc) as nations on their page "joining the EU".
The purpose of the inquiry is not about finding crimes, its to see what happened, what went went, what went badly and what we should do in the future.
I am not arguing for a truth and reconcilliation style amnesty from prosecution. But if we want an accurate story there needs to be a sense of proportion about the evidence.
You can argue that contracts should not have been awarded on the fly to chums. I think that's pretty obvious. But you also need to take account of the situation at the time. The screaming from the media and the medics for PPE and the actions of our allies such as France. It would have been hard to ignore an offer of help.
The crime though is not going after those who failed to deliver but still have the money.
The reality was that there were and are talks, but they were and are going nowhere. A Turkey that joined the EU would have been a very different creature to the one we have now. But diplomacy means not saying that out loud. It may be true, but the important thing is to keep talking.
In that sense, it was like the claim on That Blooming Bus. It could be just about said without being an absolute lie, but truth was distorted like a Dali painting. But the cost of rebutting it properly would have been too high.
So please tell me (or a Labour supporter can chip in if they want): what made Labour think "Issa Exchange Ltd" could supply PPE?
And BTW, whilst you no longer support Labour, you seem fairly strongly anti-Conservative. Which is fair enough, but don't pretend it's not a bias.
Edit: I assume this is the company they thought could supply PPE:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08108605/filing-history
What was notable was the way two different Tory MPs worked on the committee. One was a right winger with whom I had little in common. He appeared to put the hours in, look at the evidence and not be deflected by his own biases. He didn't seek publicity for his work. The other was someone whose views where akin to mine. She seemed to do little work, but just seeked publicity constantly. My views on both individuals changed after that. People you agree with can be rubbish at doing stuff and people you disagree with can do a good job regardless of their overlying views.
Progress was suspended after the attempted coup and associated crackdown in 2016 but that happened after the referendum so was not known about at the time.
This is combined with a collection of face shields and masks to create a barrier full of holes, for the medical staff. This means that if the next epidemic is truly airborne, it won't work.
Modern reusable gear exists - i've used some of it for welding toxic materials (Stainless Steel). But it seems that we have an institutional problem against using it. The latest stuff has features that answer the problems that made adopting the disposable stuff seem like a good idea.
Have the government admitted it cost that much?
The Leave campaign just exploited the opportunity to highlight issues of control over immigration and the government saying one thing and doing another, but the idea that millions of people were conned into voting Leave because they were afraid of Turkey's imminent accession is ridiculous.
I knew a tech company that was trying to get some diagnostic kit in use by the NHS, and it was not a pleasant experience for them.
The following year, Merkel did this purely for domestic electoral purposes:
https://news.sky.com/story/angela-merkel-u-turns-on-turkey-eu-membership-bid-in-election-tv-debate-11019717
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to block Turkey joining the EU, as she pitched for re-election in a TV debate.
'May join' would be acceptable IMO. 'Joining' is not.
I wonder if our Beibheirli reckons we should never have conducted even a single Covid test? As that's the implication of using that £37bn figure like that.
I don't understand why intelligent people still think the ap cost 37 billion.
"If you just google, there's someone out there."
Those who know a bit about manufacturing, know that there is a long list of companies that claim they can provide anything.
A favourite is the Chinese company that claims to be able to deliver metric tons of dioxygen difluoride**.
Bit like the BritVolt thing - you don't need skills, or technology. Just "management".
**Tons of that would be insane. And probably require cordoning off the area for several miles. And arresting everyone involved - it would undoubtedly breach several international treaties on toxic materials.
However it is often trotted out, especially on twitter. Usually by FBPE types. It seems to have become accepted as fact by people looking to bash the govt.
It might be true of the loudest voices - but to believe that represents pretty much everyone is to fall into the kind of trap in a manner you would rightly decry in others.
"You can't pay the nurses in rNHS a decent pay rise but you spent £37BN on an app that did not work."
I get it - I am incredibly lucky that no-one in my family died, or was refused a last hug in hospital. There is huge anger about things like that. Many people (wrongly I think) blame the government for all those who died (which is bonkers - our death rates are similar to other western nations).
"Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union#Negotiation_progress..
Both Angela Merkel and David Cameron had spoken then recently and positively about accelerating the Acquis part of the joining process.
So joining was acceptable. The idea that Merkel and Cameron were speaking positively about accelerating the joining the process, but intended to veto the application later on, certainly implies dishonesty but not from the people who made the advert.
If the UK was an attractive place to invest it would already be happening
Overtaxed and overegulated.
Remember this is in 2016 prior to the attempted coup, crackdown against democracy and turn towards autocracy that has happened since. And at the time the recent news from both Angela Merkel and David Cameron and others had all been about positive steps to accelerate the Acquis process.
I take what Merkel and Cameron were saying at face value and do not believe they were lying, so I don't think this is a lie. If you're saying this is a lie, because Merkel and Cameron were lying, then who is responsible?
Track and trace was a huge waste of money - and obviously so long before it was closed down.
An inquiry: A process by which an embarrassing story disappears from public view.
A report: What a person who had nothing to with the original events has to present to Parliament and/or the media many years later. See the Savile Inquiry Report.
Peerage: what the author of a report producing a satisfactory outcome for those commissioning it gets, entirely coincidentally, after the report has been finished.
Conclusions: Usually written before the inquiry has heard any evidence.
Recommendations: What you find, if you read that far, in the Appendices to a report.
Working group: A group of people unable to avoid being tasked with the responsibility of coming up with suggestions as to how recommendations might be implemented.
The long grass: Where recommendations usually end up. See also “Inquiry”
Lack of resources: The best reason yet invented for not implementing any difficult recommendations.
Lessons learned: Lessons which are never learned by those who need to learn them.
“This must never happen again” – “This must never happen again during my term of office, at least not before I resign/retire and draw my gold-plated, index-linked, final salary pension or move onto an even more well-paid position.”
https://fullfact.org/online/track-and-trace-project-cost/
I think test and trace did actually suppress things a bit. It was never able to shut it down completely (for many reasons) but I think there was an effect.
If someone says, "I'm running the London marathon," it does imply they are committed to get to the starting line, and you might feel deceived if they haven't even applied, but even if they turn up on the day and start the race, finishing is another matter.
The starting line in EU terms is the opening of the acquis accession chapters. Turkey was in the race and despite getting into trouble, had various people offering a helping hand to reach the finish line.
The Government haven't admitted it cost that much.
Anyone keeping emergency stockpiles of anything, should make sure that they remain serviceable and are inspected regularly.
For things like medical PPE, the stockpiles themselves should be at least one year’s supply *in the emergency scenario*, which means a lot of rotation. Domestic manufacturers should also be identified, and contracted in advance to switch production on request.
Once lateral flow tests were readily available, and more was known about Covid, it was clearly a waste if money.
It's not a simple matter, and different future pandemics might require different responses. It would be a positive aspect of the enquiry if it were to tease out the complexities.
Though if course the technologies now available - including cheap in the field sequencing - will change how to plan for future responses.
From memory the UK was going through more stock of PPE per week than it would normally go through per year in normal circumstances. So how do you logistically rotate that?
So even if you rotate perfectly, you either need stuff stockpiled for ten years in normal circumstances, or you are going to run out of PPE within ten weeks.
That's why realistically if we're to have a usable stockpile that can get us through a pandemic, we need stocks that can be stored in a warehouse for years. Because we simply don't need that volume in normal circumstances.
Left alone, stones can crumble.
The traditional view of non-disposable kit was that it is
1) heavy
2) hard to clean
3) obstructs hearing and vision
4) hot
5) Doesn't fit well to some people
Better materials mean that 1) has gone away.
2) has been dealt with by a combination of better materials for the equipment and the cleaning solutions. Truly waterproof electronics mean that such components can just be dunked in the cleaning solution, as well
3) Improvements in casting plastic mean that clear visors with anti-fogging are standard. Hearing can be augmented by electronic systems or the better solutions to 5) can mean a face dam that actually works.
4) Blown air from a belt mounted device is a simple, standard solution. This actually makes the equipment feel air-conditioned in summer heat. Or when welding!
5) Scan and 3D print of the parts that actually touch the face etc is known, implemented solution. This is then clipped onto the main equipment.
If Cameron had tried to deny that Turkey was joining the EU, it would have a massive diplomatic faux pas, as the official line was that everyone was working towards Turkish accession. Which is why he was furious that the subject even came up, and gave an answer remarkably like we now see from Starmer and Davey when asked to define “woman”.
1) Enthusiasm
2) Disillusionment
3) Panic and hysteria
4) Search for the guilty
5) Punishment of the innocent
6) Praise and honour for the nonparticipants
See the story of HMS Captain
Edit: just found the following:
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/The-supply-of-personal-protective-equipment-PPE-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic.pdf
In a passionate defence of Turkey, whose EU ambitions have long been championed by Britain, the prime minister will accuse Paris and Berlin of double standards for expecting Ankara to guard Europe's borders as a Nato member while closing the door to EU membership.
"When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a Nato ally, and what Turkey is doing today in Afghanistan alongside our European allies, it makes me angry that your progress towards EU membership can be frustrated in the way it has been," the prime minister will say in a speech in the Turkish capital.
"I believe it's just wrong to say Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit inside the tent."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jul/27/david-cameron-turkey-european-union
Awkward.
Also, ancient history and boring.
Ironically ministers are highlighting the youth mobility schemes and working holiday maker visa schemes .
So it’s now easier for young people to go to those countries than to the EU .
Surely those schemes would work with the EU aswell , this would help hospitality in the UK and at least give a chance to younger people to claw back some of their freedom which they lost because of Brexit.
- If it transitions and goes through the process of being legally recognised...
But please give examples to prove me wrong. I would love to see a full-hearted defence of free speech and free expression by people in the public eye accompanied by actions consistent with what they say.
And it will give younger people more freedom than they had pre-Brexit.
It is worth remembering that even when we had free movement more British expats emigrated to Australia than the entire EU combined, excluding Ireland for whom free movement continues under the Common Travel Area anyway.
Anything that makes travel with Australia and New Zealand better and easier is more useful for Britons than free movement with Europe.
So every year you would have to dispose of a huge pile of out of date PPE.
Other options that should be considered
1) Non-disposable PPE. This would have a higher capital cost, but would offer other things, such as resilience in a pandemic and the ability to have "kit" system that builds up to full airtight protection.
2) Manufacturing facilities for the PPE. Runs normally at x% of capacity. It has the raw materials for your years worth of PPE stored - they would need to be non-volatile precursors. Produces PPE for the NHS normally. Every now and then, as a practise, surges to full capacity.
https://twitter.com/kafkaswife/status/1663588931760259072
says £35 million
Which in turn comes from
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Test-and-trace-in-England-progress-update.pdf#page=35
EDIT: I found this by using Google. literally 30 seconds work.
It’s a massive potential market, and source of Labour and skills as well as low cost manufacturing and shared services hub, while also opening up Turkic Central Asia to greater investment and access. Historically a core part of European and Mediterranean civilisation, from prehistory onwards. Would have brought it more closely into things like the EU sanctions regime on Russia. Would have forced closer adherence to rule of law and journalistic independence. Would probably have led to Cypriot reunification. Would have given the EU greater heft in trade
disputes with the US. Would moderate China’s influence in Central Asia. Might have forced earlier resolution of Karabakh conflict in Azerbaijan, and so on.
Didn’t Burberry make hospital gowns at one point, and the users said they were of much higher quality than usual?
My favourite pandemic story is the Mercedes F1 engine factory, that managed to churn out 10,000 reverse-engineered CPAP breathing machines in less than a month, and open-sourced the whole project down to the CAD drawings and CNC machine files. Dozens of other countries then picked up the project. Government planners should have agreements to work with such engineering companies, for the next time they might be useful. UK has a massive aerospace and motorsport industry that can be leaned on in an emergency.
A relative runs a building business. The comedy of having x number of green box kits on site… one time an inspecting type was banging on about he could only see x-1. The response was to open a cupboard.
Due to a delivery issue - it had gone to the site by mistake - there were over a hundred first aid kits in the cupboard.