We need to come out of lockdown as soon as possible for the sake of our sanity, economy and freedom. But in a safe way. So we can't reopen everything yet.
So Boris needs to present a clear plan on Sunday to us coming out with stages and timescales. This will maintain the support of the nation.
We don't want the wishy washy 'plan' put forward by the Scottish executive who seem happy to restrict people's freedom for as long as possible.
And we need to stop furlough after 30 June except for those businesses which legally cannot operate eg pubs.
Agreed, though as we locked down a week or two after Germany, France, Spain and Italy we should also open up a week or two after them as well and see how their lockdown develops first
Entirely correct HYUFD. I am not proposing any significant lockdown changes until 1 June. But Boris should announce these on Sunday to give businesses 3 weeks to prepare.
Some enlightened companies are already planning for it and making big changes for the start of easing. It is obvious from what we have seen what is going to happen. It is going to be bad for plenty, some smug Tories will soon get to see how what they counted as lazy indolent scroungers manage to survive at first hand. As said earlier they will not find it a bed of roses.
Withdrawing the furlough will encourage people to stand on their own feet. We need to keep the 'lazy indolent scroungers' to a minimum!
I'm going to start a new career as a freelance photojournalist. My first assignment is a quick trip to Snowdonia to snap the local coppers enforcing the lockdown. I need a nubile "darkroom assistant" to hold my zoom, but I realise this isn't the ideal place to advertise the vacancy.
You would be a bit late.
Plenty of photos of that have been published and with huge support from the local communities
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Supposedly the software has been written by VMWare Pivotal Labs, a firm that does so much mobile development I cannot see it mentioned on their website.
I think that's just an off the shelf appify your software solution.
Nope Pivotal Labs is a process / software development consultancy - think of it as a more recent Accenture or EDS.
Dell is throwing all those items into vmware as like HP they are splitting the less interesting hardware business from the (in theory) rapidly expanding cloud / consultancy / software businesses.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
Those countries all have gigantic land borders that are impossible to close fully. What's our excuse?
We're a globalised, modern, interconnected nation.
But we could have closed the border and quarantined all returning British citizens from early March. The government chose not to against the advice of the home secretary. Why did we make that decision.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
I'd rather be in the position Germany finds itself in right now.
At this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Italy finds itself in?
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
How do you get to be in Germany's position without Germany's prior healthcare system? And prior manufacturing system? And acceptance of reliance on the private sector for testing?
Oh it turns out you can make judgements at this stage after all. Just not ones that reflect badly on the British government.
I expect Boris to lay out a clear plan for most businesses to reopen from around 1 June. And ideally to set out an outline timetable for others such as gyms, pubs etc which will reopen later. This isn't 'chanting political slogans'. It's getting people back to work to save the economy.
So about social distancing...
You are insisting that we all go back to normal at the end of the month. Despite the ongoing pandemic. Despite the government's own medical advisory team. Despite the massive public support for the lockdown and the obvious public fear about going out that won't be swept away by one Boris speech.
Why are you insisting this? Because "Withdrawing the furlough will encourage people to stand on their own feet" - a political slogan. I understand the economic wrecking this is causing and all the non-CV19 medical crises also happening. But the notion that we just drop everything and restore status quo ante is at best hilarious and at worst a deeply cycnical throwing under the bus of people's health for political zealotry. Like Donald Trump.
I didn't say anything about 'going back to normal' on 1 June although I wish we could! Boris needs to set out a plan which reflects the need for social distancing at this time but which also enables the economy to restart. We can't all sit on welfare which furlough is effectively part of, forever.
Huh? You said "I expect Boris to lay out a clear plan for most businesses to reopen from around 1 June". As I keep patiently explaining "most businesses" will not reopen from around 1st June or anything like that. Because children won't be going back to school and nursery. Because public transport won't be running. Because people will not be allowed to go to pubs or museums or gigs or the football.
We can't all sit on furlough - we know that. But with so many businesses to go pop mid-June onwards when they default on their rent again and furlough being chopped back, there are 6.3m people on furlough who predominantly are going to the dole not to work in July. If thats your policy and political persuasion - and it is - why not just say so?
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
I'd rather be in the position Germany finds itself in right now.
At this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Italy finds itself in?
GOOD. We've established the point that one can sensibly make judgements now.
On any sensible measure, Britain is near the foot of the table as things currently stand.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
The position Germany finds itself in of course - which would have meant decades of not treating our heath system as if it were a religion, loudly proclaiming it to be the best in the world, when anyone who's ever worked abroad knows it definitely isn't.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Supposedly the software has been written by VMWare Pivotal Labs, a firm that does so much mobile development I cannot see it mentioned on their website.
I think that's just an off the shelf appify your software solution.
Pivotal is a consultancy, I think, of sorts. Having read their pitch I am still not 100%....
And we need to stop furlough after 30 June except for those businesses which legally cannot operate eg pubs.
A lengthy list just in hospitality, and don't forget all of the supply and support businesses below them who have no customers. Unless you extend the scheme to the wholesalers and the cleaners and the service companies and the suppliers then you'll not be able to reopen restaurants as they won't be able to get food to cook.
So thats hospitality. As the guidance remains WFH unless you cannot, that means public transport not running fully as you cannot social distance people on trains buses and planes. Which is all their staff, their support staff, the businesses who sell stuff to the people who use public transport.
Schools and nurseries? Can't reopen as you can't socially distance kids. A possible limited part time reopening is in the offing. I'd already covered wholesalers who supply school meals in the first paragraph, but as kids aren't going back their parents can't go back regardless of the sector they work in. Nor can you say "get the grandparents to look after them whilst you work" as they are in the protected group.
Etc etc. Its not as simple as "end the furlough scheme" when so many people will be unable to return to work. And thats to say nothing of businesses who will be thrown under the bus by "restaurants can reopen for takeaway only" which means no support which means they fail. With March rents barely paid it seems unlikely that June rents will be paid, so expect an avalanche of insolvencies from mid-June onwards...
Surely public transport needs to open as fully as possible to enable those who have to travel to work to do so as safely as possible. One of the things that caused overcrowding on the Tube at the beginning of lockdown was the reduction in serviced
Transport is going to be the biggest problem to solve, especially in the larger cities. White-collar staff in London are going to be WFH for probably the rest of the year, and an awful lot of companies will be looking at the whole business model of having thousands of people spend several hours a day and a lot of their income to all congregate together in the most expensive offices in the country.
The Tube, even running a full service (which the Unions and their Mayor don't want to do) barely provides enough capacity for the blue-collar and key workers, without serious overcrowding.
Commercial property letting seems like a real bad game to be in at the moment.
Only aircraft leasing is going to be in worse shape than prime commercial property, once this all shakes out.
Maybe. Travel and tourism might easily recover once there is international agreement on what precautions are necessary (and if anyone still has a job).
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
I'd rather be in the position Germany finds itself in right now.
At this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Italy finds itself in?
GOOD. We've established the point that one can sensibly make judgements now.
On any sensible measure, Britain is near the foot of the table as things currently stand.
Middle.
Germany are one extreme, Italy are another extreme. We are in the middle.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
Do we have excess death figures for Germany?
Has a greater percentage of the UK population had the disease compared to Germany?
We don't know which is why any comparison is nothing more than a safety blanket / baseball bat (take your pick).
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
I'd rather be in the position Germany finds itself in right now.
At this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Italy finds itself in?
GOOD. We've established the point that one can sensibly make judgements now.
On any sensible measure, Britain is near the foot of the table as things currently stand.
Middle.
Germany are one extreme, Italy are another extreme. We are in the middle.
A very hard contention to make. Especially as the same three countries you keep trotting out to justify it were hit in the first wave, which Britain was not.
Britain squandered the time it was given because its Prime Minister and government were negligent and overconfident.
You have to hand it to the blue PBers, in their world everything is going swimmingly well. Move along nothing to see here.
The blue PBers are helped by the fact that their political opponents have offered no early alterntive take on how to handle pre-lockdown, lockdown, post lockdown.
Other than posting rather twattish images of Comical Ali or Inspector Frank Dreben.
I dunno - the celebration of the anniversary of Bobby Sands death yesterday could be a pivotal moment in the revival of the Labour party.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A psychiatrist said on 5 live this morning
'When you become anxious you become intolerant of other views'
But we could have closed the border and quarantined all returning British citizens from early March. The government chose not to against the advice of the home secretary. Why did we make that decision.
It really is very simple. When we were a member of the EU it was illegal to close our borders. We needed to Take Back Control so that we could close our borders. Which is why once this broke we closed our borders to foreigners and the EU slave states did not.
No, stop. Reverse that. The EU states who legally couldn't close their borders which is why we had to Take Back Control closed theirs. And the sovereign UK left them open.
EU states Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Spain all closed their borders. Austria, Denmark, Germany, Slovenia partially closed borders with restrictions and checks imposed - that was all by 16th March. All impossible claimed Brexiteers. Yet happened. The UK? Come on in, we want your viral load to make people die here faster, it means we'll get herd immunity and we will carry out Three hundred thousand and thirty four, nine hundred and seventy four thousand tests. Huzzah!
How is our English Brexiteer exceptionalism working out vs these EU closed border checks quarantine slave states...?
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
Those countries all have gigantic land borders that are impossible to close fully. What's our excuse?
We're a globalised, modern, interconnected nation.
But we could have closed the border and quarantined all returning British citizens from early March. The government chose not to against the advice of the home secretary. Why did we make that decision.
The freedom of air travel in and out, and even within the UK has been truly ludicrous. The Aer Lingus flight from London to Belfast earlier this week demonstrates this perfectly.
It seems on PB we are giving the Government a free pass on everything else they have done to manage the pandemic, fair enough, hindsight is a wonderful asset.The Government's policy on pandemic air travel however should be the exception. Even an idiot knows that air recirculates throughout an aircraft's a/c system so even social distancing doesn't work.
There is no doubt yesterday was an awkward one for the gov't who didn't initially help their cause at the 5pm press conference by putting up Raab alongside just the one expert Angela McLean who, top scientist she may be, is patently not such a great communicator. The PM really should be there today with the A team for obvious reasons.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
The position Germany finds itself in of course - which would have meant decades of not treating our heath system as if it were a religion, loudly proclaiming it to be the best in the world, when anyone who's ever worked abroad knows it definitely isn't.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A psychiatrist said on 5 live this morning
'When you become anxious you become intolerant of other views'
Alastair fits that description quite well
@Big_G_NorthWales I appreciate that your slavish loyalty to the government requires you to dismiss anything, including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, that shows them in a bad light. Did the psychiatrist of 5 live touch on why that might be?
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
Those countries all have gigantic land borders that are impossible to close fully. What's our excuse?
We're a globalised, modern, interconnected nation.
Full of unfit, old, commuters who congregate in large cities with crap air quality with occasional pockets of daft religions who insist in cramming themselves together into small rooms.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
I'd rather be in the position Germany finds itself in right now.
At this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Italy finds itself in?
GOOD. We've established the point that one can sensibly make judgements now.
On any sensible measure, Britain is near the foot of the table as things currently stand.
Middle.
Germany are one extreme, Italy are another extreme. We are in the middle.
A very hard contention to make. Especially as the same three countries you keep trotting out to justify it were hit in the first wave, which Britain was not.
Britain squandered the time it was given because its Prime Minister and government were negligent and overconfident.
Not sure you understand what waves mean. We likely had cases around the same time as Italy, just the spread was slower. The first wave is ending now across the world.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Supposedly the software has been written by VMWare Pivotal Labs, a firm that does so much mobile development I cannot see it mentioned on their website.
What chance that they designed the whole thing from the backend surveillance requirements first and foremost, then did the 'easy' consumer mobile app as an afterthought - failing to realise that what they needed it to do was technically impossible?
Given the software house involved, your answer will be the same as mine (very high).
Which actually explains how we got to this point - a big database solution was proposed by people who understand big databases without realising that data collection is the issue here and a mobile phone is far harder to collect data with compared to a fun shared facebook quiz.
Hancock is going to have to fall on his sword for this - as the issue that destroys the implementation was highlighted by Apple and Google 3 weeks ago.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Obviously nobody knows less about this stuff than me but even I know that the NHS are crap at this spoddy neckbeard stuff and Apple/Google are not crap at it.
Not just an NHS thing though.
One of the under-the-radar fiascos has been the scheme to replace free school meals. Initially, schools did their own thing, but now are expected to use a single voucher provider, which doesn't cover all shops and is struggling to keep up with demand.
You have to hand it to the blue PBers, in their world everything is going swimmingly well. Move along nothing to see here.
The blue PBers are helped by the fact that their political opponents have offered no early alterntive take on how to handle pre-lockdown, lockdown, post lockdown.
Other than posting rather twattish images of Comical Ali or Inspector Frank Dreben.
I dunno - the celebration of the anniversary of Bobby Sands death yesterday could be a pivotal moment in the revival of the Labour party.
desperate stuff from you, unsurprisingly.
Ah come on. London Young Labour idolising the IRA is pretty absurd even for Corbynite mouth-foamers. Add into that the Kensington Labour Group disciplining a councillor for organising food parcels and it really does make the loony left look loony.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A psychiatrist said on 5 live this morning
'When you become anxious you become intolerant of other views'
Alastair fits that description quite well
@Big_G_NorthWales I appreciate that your slavish loyalty to the government requires you to dismiss anything, including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, that shows them in a bad light. Did the psychiatrist of 5 live touch on why that might be?
When I agree with Big G then I think you have a problem.
We are in the middle of a dense forest without a map, other places and countries which we know exist but can't see where they actually are, are shouting instructions at us based on what they have done and think they seeing.
The idea that we can actually look back when probably 20-30% into the journey and decide we have made the correct or wrong decisions is for the birds.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There is a league table for how democratically-elected leaders have coped with the pandemic so far. At this stage, Jacinda Arden is the clear leader. There is an unholy dogfight between Trump and Bolsonaro for bottom place, and I'm afraid Johnson is hovering just above the relegation zone. But most of the crucial loosening the lockdown fixtures are still to come.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
Thanks - those graphs don't seem to be up to date for all the countries. Italy's ends at April 4th for some reason for instance unless I'm looking at the wrong thing...
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A psychiatrist said on 5 live this morning
'When you become anxious you become intolerant of other views'
Alastair fits that description quite well
@Big_G_NorthWales I appreciate that your slavish loyalty to the government requires you to dismiss anything, including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, that shows them in a bad light. Did the psychiatrist of 5 live touch on why that might be?
When I agree with Big G then I think you have a problem.
We are in the middle of a dense forest without a map, other places and countries which we know exist but can't see where they actually are, are shouting instructions at us based on what they have done and think they seeing.
The idea that we can actually look back when probably 20-30% into the journey and decide we have made the correct or wrong decisions is for the birds.
Yet you can see that many Conservatives feel very ready to form snap judgements on the available data. They just cherry-pick like mad to avoid the obvious one.
A rare visitor from southern Europe, perhaps north Africa. The sort of beastie that will travel on the Spanish plume of hot air we are about to see in our weather.
Great pictures. May I ask whether the moths are somehow trapped to be so amenable to photography? And if so, whether you then release them?
I have grown quite attached to the "daily moth" but I have assumed that the pictures are professional shots of the moths MM has seen in his trap overnight rather than seen in his er
I want to qualify what I wrote earlier. Let's talk football.
The Government had a piss-poor first half and went about 5-0 down.
The second half they have played much better, probably narrowly winning it.
There may be several more legs to play.
The score was not 5-0 first half. It perhaps SHOULD have been, but Labour had 11 goalies on the pitch, arguing about which of them would take a penalty that never came....
Rather telling that you think the government is engaged in a match against Labour, rather than the Coronavirus.
Exactly what I was thinking. For some, their party winning is far more important that their party doing the right thing.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
How do you get to be in Germany's position without Germany's prior healthcare system? And prior manufacturing system? And acceptance of reliance on the private sector for testing?
Oh it turns out you can make judgements at this stage after all. Just not ones that reflect badly on the British government.
It helps if one is less judgemental and accept that humans make mistakes. The Govt probably has made mistakes (the benefit of hindsight displayed on here is a wonder to see)but some on P B are trying to suggest that extra deaths did not matter to.the Govt. I find that more tgan difficult to believe .
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A psychiatrist said on 5 live this morning
'When you become anxious you become intolerant of other views'
Alastair fits that description quite well
@Big_G_NorthWales I appreciate that your slavish loyalty to the government requires you to dismiss anything, including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, that shows them in a bad light. Did the psychiatrist of 5 live touch on why that might be?
I made my comment piece earlier this morning in a fair and non political way
Your hatred of this government and absurd view HMG is responsible for the death of tens of thousands is pathetic
You have to hand it to the blue PBers, in their world everything is going swimmingly well. Move along nothing to see here.
The blue PBers are helped by the fact that their political opponents have offered no early alterntive take on how to handle pre-lockdown, lockdown, post lockdown.
Other than posting rather twattish images of Comical Ali or Inspector Frank Dreben.
I dunno - the celebration of the anniversary of Bobby Sands death yesterday could be a pivotal moment in the revival of the Labour party.
desperate stuff from you, unsurprisingly.
Ah come on. London Young Labour idolising the IRA is pretty absurd even for Corbynite mouth-foamers. Add into that the Kensington Labour Group disciplining a councillor for organising food parcels and it really does make the loony left look loony.
The lack of response from Starmer is telling too for the next election.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Obviously nobody knows less about this stuff than me but even I know that the NHS are crap at this spoddy neckbeard stuff and Apple/Google are not crap at it.
Not just an NHS thing though.
One of the under-the-radar fiascos has been the scheme to replace free school meals. Initially, schools did their own thing, but now are expected to use a single voucher provider, which doesn't cover all shops and is struggling to keep up with demand.
That makes me very sad. Free school meals (whilst necessary) are a really hard thing for kids. I think personally I'd have a food card valid within schools for every child and the kids on free school meals would get theirs paid into automatically. No idea whether it would work.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
How do you get to be in Germany's position without Germany's prior healthcare system? And prior manufacturing system? And acceptance of reliance on the private sector for testing?
Oh it turns out you can make judgements at this stage after all. Just not ones that reflect badly on the British government.
It helps if one is less judgemental and accept that humans make mistakes. The Govt probably has made mistakes (the benefit of hindsight displayed on here is a wonder to see)but some on P B are trying to suggest that extra deaths did not matter to.the Govt. I find that more tgan difficult to believe .
I absolutely accept the government wishes the extra deaths had not happened. Pretending that they did not happen, however, is absurd.
Some of the mistakes the government have made have been excusable, some seem mainly the responsibility of the scientific experts and some are scandalously negligent. No doubt there will a full inquiry in due course. I doubt it will make for a comfortable experience for the government.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Supposedly the software has been written by VMWare Pivotal Labs, a firm that does so much mobile development I cannot see it mentioned on their website.
What chance that they designed the whole thing from the backend surveillance requirements first and foremost, then did the 'easy' consumer mobile app as an afterthought - failing to realise that what they needed it to do was technically impossible?
Given the software house involved, your answer will be the same as mine (very high).
Which actually explains how we got to this point - a big database solution was proposed by people who understand big databases without realising that data collection is the issue here and a mobile phone is far harder to collect data with compared to a fun shared facebook quiz.
Hancock is going to have to fall on his sword for this - as the issue that destroys the implementation was highlighted by Apple and Google 3 weeks ago.
It was supposedly tested at an RAF base (Akrotiri? They have certainly had cases). Wouldn't this have flagged up the issues? When is it supposed to be going live on the IoW?
the benefit of hindsight displayed on here is a wonder to see.
Tosh, there's no betting markets on this for good reason but there was plenty of foresight above and below the line in the first few months of the year.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Obviously nobody knows less about this stuff than me but even I know that the NHS are crap at this spoddy neckbeard stuff and Apple/Google are not crap at it.
Not just an NHS thing though.
One of the under-the-radar fiascos has been the scheme to replace free school meals. Initially, schools did their own thing, but now are expected to use a single voucher provider, which doesn't cover all shops and is struggling to keep up with demand.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
Nope, this war not a one off battle. If we had locked down on Day 1 it wouldn't have solved anything because the virus is out there and without a vaccine until 60-80% of the population have had the disease it's going to be a major issue.
As Bill Gates stated the only time we will know which countries had the correct approach will be in hindsight when this is over. Until then except for untested people being sent into Care Homes (and that's a local level NHS issue as much as anything else) it's been a question of timing. And shutting things earlier is something that might have made things worse later.
Put another way, as at this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Germany finds itself in?
How do you get to be in Germany's position without Germany's prior healthcare system? And prior manufacturing system? And acceptance of reliance on the private sector for testing?
Oh it turns out you can make judgements at this stage after all. Just not ones that reflect badly on the British government.
Oh it turns out you can make judgments at any stage, utterly independent of background information, as long as they are ones that reflect badly on the UK and its government....
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A psychiatrist said on 5 live this morning
'When you become anxious you become intolerant of other views'
Alastair fits that description quite well
@Big_G_NorthWales I appreciate that your slavish loyalty to the government requires you to dismiss anything, including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, that shows them in a bad light. Did the psychiatrist of 5 live touch on why that might be?
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
Thanks - those graphs don't seem to be up to date for all the countries. Italy's ends at April 4th for some reason for instance unless I'm looking at the wrong thing...
Indeed. That's how up to date Italy's data is. So people looking at data and claiming the UK is "worst in Europe" is not just because the data isn't per capita but also because we get all our data in a more timely fashion than other nations do. If the deaths were to magically stop worldwide right now then the death tolls will continue to climb as we count people who have already died but we didn't count that they had yet - and that will go on for longer in some nations than others.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A psychiatrist said on 5 live this morning
'When you become anxious you become intolerant of other views'
Alastair fits that description quite well
@Big_G_NorthWales I appreciate that your slavish loyalty to the government requires you to dismiss anything, including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, that shows them in a bad light. Did the psychiatrist of 5 live touch on why that might be?
I made my comment piece earlier this morning in a fair and non political way
Your hatred of this government and absurd view HMG is responsible for the death of tens of thousands is pathetic
With all due respect, sometimes your critique of Mr Meeks becomes personal.
The view from some of us who are not of the Boris-faith is that errors have been made. These errors should be called out and reviewed to prevent reoccurrence. As was demonstrated by Mr Hancock slapping down Allin-Khan, any, even constructive criticism is unacceptable.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
Anyway Prof Ferguson has been found and swiftly tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion for breaking the rules just as the Scottish Chief Medical Officer was. He's yesterday's news. Today's news is still the lack of restrictions on flights and the looming app disaster.
His modelling isn't yesterday's news though. It is still being used to guide our lockdown strategy. Swedish experts say it is effectively nonsense.
His own breaking of the rules/hypocrisy has nothing to do with how good or not his model is, that's another discussion entirely.
It shows he doesn't really, really, really think that lockdown is a sensible (or effective) measure.
And he has shown this quite elegantly.
The lockdown has definitely been effective at lowering the transmission rate.
Of course it has. But what was the cost/benefit?
As the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown then surely the pre lockdown advice had the bigger impact.
Ah, so when you said you wanted us to pay attention to and debate that graph what you actually meant was you wanted us to uncritically accept it as true as it backed up your dogmatic preconceived view.
Did you even read and process any of the criticism of that chart? Did you read and process any of the criticism of the person who produced the chart?
Its based on the hospital admissions data which showed that these peaked on the 2nd April 2020. So working back from that date gives a peak of infections around the 20th March. Its quite simple really. Its not a dogmatic preconceived view, its based on facts. Of course you may argue that the hospital admissions data has nothing to do with the rate of infection.
That's simple enough. It means the peak of infections was somewhere between the 18th of March and 27th of March. Looking at median (infection to symptoms) to median (symptoms to hospital), it would be the weekend of 22nd-23rd March.
Didn't Hames claim it was the 7th or 8th of March? Not sure how that works out.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Obviously nobody knows less about this stuff than me but even I know that the NHS are crap at this spoddy neckbeard stuff and Apple/Google are not crap at it.
Not just an NHS thing though.
One of the under-the-radar fiascos has been the scheme to replace free school meals. Initially, schools did their own thing, but now are expected to use a single voucher provider, which doesn't cover all shops and is struggling to keep up with demand.
How, in 2020, are people designing public websites that are not almost infinitely scalable in response to demand?
This problem was solved a few years ago with AWS and Azure cloud services, it's really not that difficult any more.
God, am I pleased not to be working on public sector IT projects.
Edenred are the people who do Civil Service staff reward vouchers. I'm not surprised it isn't scalable this much. Although I thought schools were supposed to originally do their own thing, followed by headteachers showing they couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery.
At 6.00am on 5 live Rachel Burden opened with the worst deaths in Europe headline then provided the fairest and balanced commentary on the figures I have yet to hear. Maybe it a result of the 'BBC fact check' report on their website, which explains the dangers of relying on Europe comparisons and that a mature debate on the comparable death rates, not only here and in Europe but across the world will happen in the fulness of time. Indeed in discussion with her co presenter, Nicky Campbell, it seems that most texts they received from the public did not think the comparisons were reliable
Mistakes were made in the early days, but I think Sage and Cobra's single objective was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and in this they succeeded. It is clear they did not have the testing capability and ideally lockdown should have happened a week or ten days earlier
However, in discussing this with Jonathan Ashworth this morning on Sky, even Kay Burley, (yes Kay Burley) said 'Hindsight is a wonderful thing'
That sounds like, finally, credit where it's due. Maybe at least some of the media are slowly waking up to the actual public mood outside their own rarified little bubble.
Credit for what are, no matter how you slice it, among the worst numbers in Europe?
Credit to the journalists, for finally realising their daily inanity of political point scoring was going down like a bucket of cold sick with the public.
So the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths are just to be ignored?
I'm not seeing tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. I'm seeing tens of thousands of pandemic deaths in almost every major nation - and comparable numbers in almost every minor one.
I suggest you get a better prescription on your glasses then. The government's management of the first stage of this health crisis has been disastrous, the more reprehensible because Britain was not in the first wave.
On a life-for-like basis our excess deaths seem to be much better than Belgium, Italy and Spain, comparable to France and much worse than Germany. Middle of the road.
A psychiatrist said on 5 live this morning
'When you become anxious you become intolerant of other views'
Alastair fits that description quite well
@Big_G_NorthWales I appreciate that your slavish loyalty to the government requires you to dismiss anything, including tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, that shows them in a bad light. Did the psychiatrist of 5 live touch on why that might be?
I made my comment piece earlier this morning in a fair and non political way
Your hatred of this government and absurd view HMG is responsible for the death of tens of thousands is pathetic
From the tables that @Philip_Thompson linked to, you can see that on the available data Britain is currently joint fourth worst in that list of 16 countries. If Britain had achieved even the below median result of Sweden, 15,000 fewer people would have died. It seems to be the current position of Conservatives that this failure is attributable to astrological formations.
Just reading about the unfolding disaster that is the NHS app. I think this mistake adds an extra two weeks to the lockdown. Is Matt Hancock going to refund the treasury the additional tens of billions his idiotic decisions have cost so far?
I think the app is a good idea and plenty of positivity about it on the news last night which allays my fears about reaching the 60% user uptake (theres sadly a lot of conspiracy theorist hypocrites who won't). The Isle of Wight is the perfect place to test it and iron out any flaws.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
There's only one small problem with it:
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Obviously nobody knows less about this stuff than me but even I know that the NHS are crap at this spoddy neckbeard stuff and Apple/Google are not crap at it.
Not just an NHS thing though.
One of the under-the-radar fiascos has been the scheme to replace free school meals. Initially, schools did their own thing, but now are expected to use a single voucher provider, which doesn't cover all shops and is struggling to keep up with demand.
That makes me very sad. Free school meals (whilst necessary) are a really hard thing for kids. I think personally I'd have a food card valid within schools for every child and the kids on free school meals would get theirs paid into automatically. No idea whether it would work.
Quite a lot of schools have moved to a cashless model in-school, either using an ID card or a fingerprint ID. Then either the family or the FSM system tops it up invisibly. It's got lots of advantages- partly the stigma thing you mention, but also efficiency and reduced potential for bullying.
Trouble is, how do you reproduce this when FSM kids aren't in school? And the trouble is that the government went for a big compulsory centralised website solution, which was the kind of thing you don't do if you understand websites.
I have to say fair play to Sunak thus far, he's playing a difficult hand well. Probably the best of the bunch. True it does involve spending tommorow's money rather freely and he'll have some unpalatable chocies to make but he's had a very good war thus far.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Obviously nobody knows less about this stuff than me but even I know that the NHS are crap at this spoddy neckbeard stuff and Apple/Google are not crap at it.
Not just an NHS thing though.
One of the under-the-radar fiascos has been the scheme to replace free school meals. Initially, schools did their own thing, but now are expected to use a single voucher provider, which doesn't cover all shops and is struggling to keep up with demand.
That makes me very sad. Free school meals (whilst necessary) are a really hard thing for kids. I think personally I'd have a food card valid within schools for every child and the kids on free school meals would get theirs paid into automatically. No idea whether it would work.
Quite a lot of schools have moved to a cashless model in-school, either using an ID card or a fingerprint ID. Then either the family or the FSM system tops it up invisibly. It's got lots of advantages- partly the stigma thing you mention, but also efficiency and reduced potential for bullying.
Trouble is, how do you reproduce this when FSM kids aren't in school? And the trouble is that the government went for a big compulsory centralised website solution, which was the kind of thing you don't do if you understand websites.
Mr. Meeks, you're aware there are wildly different demographics between Sweden and the UK, right?
A quick spot of googling throws out that Sweden has 64 people per square mile. The UK has 727. Sweden has a total population just over 10m. London has a population of nearly 9m (again, via Google).
And that's before we get to the probable earlier than initially thought spread of the disease which is far more likely to affect London and other parts of the UK than most of Sweden.
There is a league table for how democratically-elected leaders have coped with the pandemic so far. At this stage, Jacinda Arden is the clear leader. There is an unholy dogfight between Trump and Bolsonaro for bottom place, and I'm afraid Johnson is hovering just above the relegation zone. But most of the crucial loosening the lockdown fixtures are still to come.
I don't disagree on the bottom places but the top has to be Tsai Ing-wen. Loads of traffic from China, much less information available to her, and a decisive, effective response way back in *January*.
I expect Boris to lay out a clear plan for most businesses to reopen from around 1 June. And ideally to set out an outline timetable for others such as gyms, pubs etc which will reopen later. This isn't 'chanting political slogans'. It's getting people back to work to save the economy.
So about social distancing...
You are insisting that we all go back to normal at the end of the month. Despite the ongoing pandemic. Despite the government's own medical advisory team. Despite the massive public support for the lockdown and the obvious public fear about going out that won't be swept away by one Boris speech.
Why are you insisting this? Because "Withdrawing the furlough will encourage people to stand on their own feet" - a political slogan. I understand the economic wrecking this is causing and all the non-CV19 medical crises also happening. But the notion that we just drop everything and restore status quo ante is at best hilarious and at worst a deeply cycnical throwing under the bus of people's health for political zealotry. Like Donald Trump.
I didn't say anything about 'going back to normal' on 1 June although I wish we could! Boris needs to set out a plan which reflects the need for social distancing at this time but which also enables the economy to restart. We can't all sit on welfare which furlough is effectively part of, forever.
Huh? You said "I expect Boris to lay out a clear plan for most businesses to reopen from around 1 June". As I keep patiently explaining "most businesses" will not reopen from around 1st June or anything like that. Because children won't be going back to school and nursery. Because public transport won't be running. Because people will not be allowed to go to pubs or museums or gigs or the football.
We can't all sit on furlough - we know that. But with so many businesses to go pop mid-June onwards when they default on their rent again and furlough being chopped back, there are 6.3m people on furlough who predominantly are going to the dole not to work in July. If thats your policy and political persuasion - and it is - why not just say so?
As I said earlier most businesses should be in a position to go back to work with appropriate safety in June with more in July.
Go back to work > keep it safe > save the economy.
Mr. Flashman (deceased), scrapping cash is insane.
If your bank account has a glitch, as has happened in recent memory, then you have zero money if you can't access it. But in a world with cash it's much easier to make do.
Not only that, there's no tracking and the government or financial organisations cannot slap on transaction taxes which are unavoidable.
Mr. Meeks, you're aware there are wildly different demographics between Sweden and the UK, right?
A quick spot of googling throws out that Sweden has 64 people per square mile. The UK has 727. Sweden has a total population just over 10m. London has a population of nearly 9m (again, via Google).
And that's before we get to the probable earlier than initially thought spread of the disease which is far more likely to affect London and other parts of the UK than most of Sweden.
And that's why some of us have been comparing Sweden to the Denmark counterfactual, not us
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Supposedly the software has been written by VMWare Pivotal Labs, a firm that does so much mobile development I cannot see it mentioned on their website.
What chance that they designed the whole thing from the backend surveillance requirements first and foremost, then did the 'easy' consumer mobile app as an afterthought - failing to realise that what they needed it to do was technically impossible?
Given the software house involved, your answer will be the same as mine (very high).
Which actually explains how we got to this point - a big database solution was proposed by people who understand big databases without realising that data collection is the issue here and a mobile phone is far harder to collect data with compared to a fun shared facebook quiz.
Hancock is going to have to fall on his sword for this - as the issue that destroys the implementation was highlighted by Apple and Google 3 weeks ago.
It was supposedly tested at an RAF base (Akrotiri? They have certainly had cases). Wouldn't this have flagged up the issues? When is it supposed to be going live on the IoW?
Crabs who are regulars at the Barracuda Bar in Akrotraz will be infected with more than C19...
You have to hand it to the blue PBers, in their world everything is going swimmingly well. Move along nothing to see here.
The blue PBers are helped by the fact that their political opponents have offered no early alterntive take on how to handle pre-lockdown, lockdown, post lockdown.
Other than posting rather twattish images of Comical Ali or Inspector Frank Dreben.
I dunno - the celebration of the anniversary of Bobby Sands death yesterday could be a pivotal moment in the revival of the Labour party.
desperate stuff from you, unsurprisingly.
Ah come on. London Young Labour idolising the IRA is pretty absurd even for Corbynite mouth-foamers. Add into that the Kensington Labour Group disciplining a councillor for organising food parcels and it really does make the loony left look loony.
Agreed but you are not going to get rid of the loonies overnight. Every time some Corbynista tweets something stupid it is not evidence that Starmer has failed and the party is still dominated by far lefties. It will take at least a year before we know how much of far left influence remains. The new GS will be the next test.
As for London Young Labour the Tories had exactly the same problem with their youth wings to the point, I believe, where they were so embarrassing they decided to disband them.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Obviously nobody knows less about this stuff than me but even I know that the NHS are crap at this spoddy neckbeard stuff and Apple/Google are not crap at it.
Not just an NHS thing though.
One of the under-the-radar fiascos has been the scheme to replace free school meals. Initially, schools did their own thing, but now are expected to use a single voucher provider, which doesn't cover all shops and is struggling to keep up with demand.
That makes me very sad. Free school meals (whilst necessary) are a really hard thing for kids. I think personally I'd have a food card valid within schools for every child and the kids on free school meals would get theirs paid into automatically. No idea whether it would work.
Quite a lot of schools have moved to a cashless model in-school, either using an ID card or a fingerprint ID. Then either the family or the FSM system tops it up invisibly. It's got lots of advantages- partly the stigma thing you mention, but also efficiency and reduced potential for bullying.
Trouble is, how do you reproduce this when FSM kids aren't in school? And the trouble is that the government went for a big compulsory centralised website solution, which was the kind of thing you don't do if you understand websites.
The easiest way to have to make FSM work outside schools would be to plug it into the Universal Credit system. The issue with that is that half the parents are still on the old benefits system not UC.
I do actually have a little sympathy with the administrators on this, but other websites such as the one for furloughed workers and small business relief worked remarkably well under huge demand.
I expect Boris to lay out a clear plan for most businesses to reopen from around 1 June. And ideally to set out an outline timetable for others such as gyms, pubs etc which will reopen later. This isn't 'chanting political slogans'. It's getting people back to work to save the economy.
So about social distancing...
You are insisting that we all go back to normal at the end of the month. Despite the ongoing pandemic. Despite the government's own medical advisory team. Despite the massive public support for the lockdown and the obvious public fear about going out that won't be swept away by one Boris speech.
Why are you insisting this? Because "Withdrawing the furlough will encourage people to stand on their own feet" - a political slogan. I understand the economic wrecking this is causing and all the non-CV19 medical crises also happening. But the notion that we just drop everything and restore status quo ante is at best hilarious and at worst a deeply cycnical throwing under the bus of people's health for political zealotry. Like Donald Trump.
I didn't say anything about 'going back to normal' on 1 June although I wish we could! Boris needs to set out a plan which reflects the need for social distancing at this time but which also enables the economy to restart. We can't all sit on welfare which furlough is effectively part of, forever.
Huh? You said "I expect Boris to lay out a clear plan for most businesses to reopen from around 1 June". As I keep patiently explaining "most businesses" will not reopen from around 1st June or anything like that. Because children won't be going back to school and nursery. Because public transport won't be running. Because people will not be allowed to go to pubs or museums or gigs or the football.
We can't all sit on furlough - we know that. But with so many businesses to go pop mid-June onwards when they default on their rent again and furlough being chopped back, there are 6.3m people on furlough who predominantly are going to the dole not to work in July. If thats your policy and political persuasion - and it is - why not just say so?
As I said earlier most businesses should be in a position to go back to work with appropriate safety in June with more in July.
Go back to work > keep it safe > save the economy.
There you go, I've given you a slogan!
You have. As a way of avoiding any attempt at an answer to any of the points. At least we know you're a Tory! Slogans over facts and evidence.
Yet you can see that many Conservatives feel very ready to form snap judgements on the available data. They just cherry-pick like mad to avoid the obvious one.
There is a lot of data, some relevant, some irrelevant, some looks relevant and won't be, other bits look irrelevant but will be.
No-one has ever been in this situation before, there is no playbook to use. So unlike other people I won't make judgement on things unless I know I know enough to make valid points.
Which is why when I comment on data it's on the basis that this is month 3/5 in a 12/24 month battle and when I comment on IT systems it's because I know an awful, awful lot about them.
I have to say fair play to Sunak thus far, he's playing a difficult hand well. Probably the best of the bunch. True it does involve spending tommorow's money rather freely and he'll have some unpalatable chocies to make but he's had a very good war thus far.
He's done the easy bit of handing out billions in free money. He'll be the pantomime villain when half of the six million furloughed workers end up on UC instead, that will be his real test.
I expect Boris to lay out a clear plan for most businesses to reopen from around 1 June. And ideally to set out an outline timetable for others such as gyms, pubs etc which will reopen later. This isn't 'chanting political slogans'. It's getting people back to work to save the economy.
So about social distancing...
You are insisting that we all go back to normal at the end of the month. Despite the ongoing pandemic. Despite the government's own medical advisory team. Despite the massive public support for the lockdown and the obvious public fear about going out that won't be swept away by one Boris speech.
Why are you insisting this? Because "Withdrawing the furlough will encourage people to stand on their own feet" - a political slogan. I understand the economic wrecking this is causing and all the non-CV19 medical crises also happening. But the notion that we just drop everything and restore status quo ante is at best hilarious and at worst a deeply cycnical throwing under the bus of people's health for political zealotry. Like Donald Trump.
I didn't say anything about 'going back to normal' on 1 June although I wish we could! Boris needs to set out a plan which reflects the need for social distancing at this time but which also enables the economy to restart. We can't all sit on welfare which furlough is effectively part of, forever.
Huh? You said "I expect Boris to lay out a clear plan for most businesses to reopen from around 1 June". As I keep patiently explaining "most businesses" will not reopen from around 1st June or anything like that. Because children won't be going back to school and nursery. Because public transport won't be running. Because people will not be allowed to go to pubs or museums or gigs or the football.
We can't all sit on furlough - we know that. But with so many businesses to go pop mid-June onwards when they default on their rent again and furlough being chopped back, there are 6.3m people on furlough who predominantly are going to the dole not to work in July. If thats your policy and political persuasion - and it is - why not just say so?
As I said earlier most businesses should be in a position to go back to work with appropriate safety in June with more in July.
Go back to work > keep it safe > save the economy.
There you go, I've given you a slogan!
We`re on the same page. I`ve been plugging this one for a couple of weeks: "Do your duty. Save the Economy".
You have to hand it to the blue PBers, in their world everything is going swimmingly well. Move along nothing to see here.
The blue PBers are helped by the fact that their political opponents have offered no early alterntive take on how to handle pre-lockdown, lockdown, post lockdown.
Other than posting rather twattish images of Comical Ali or Inspector Frank Dreben.
I dunno - the celebration of the anniversary of Bobby Sands death yesterday could be a pivotal moment in the revival of the Labour party.
desperate stuff from you, unsurprisingly.
Ah come on. London Young Labour idolising the IRA is pretty absurd even for Corbynite mouth-foamers. Add into that the Kensington Labour Group disciplining a councillor for organising food parcels and it really does make the loony left look loony.
Agreed but you are not going to get rid of the loonies overnight. Every time some Corbynista tweets something stupid it is not evidence that Starmer has failed and the party is still dominated by far lefties. It will take at least a year before we know how much of far left influence remains. The new GS will be the next test.
As for London Young Labour the Tories had exactly the same problem with their youth wings to the point, I believe, where they were so embarrassing they decided to disband them.
Agree with all of that. Whatever Starmer does gets criticised on this front. I practice "pick your battles" so Starmer letting this slip - for now - whilst dealing with other fronts in the battle makes sense. The Corbyn/Formby management team actively encouraged and protected the lunatics, that has changed significantly with the removal of both.
There is a league table for how democratically-elected leaders have coped with the pandemic so far. At this stage, Jacinda Arden is the clear leader. There is an unholy dogfight between Trump and Bolsonaro for bottom place, and I'm afraid Johnson is hovering just above the relegation zone. But most of the crucial loosening the lockdown fixtures are still to come.
I don't disagree on the bottom places but the top has to be Tsai Ing-wen. Loads of traffic from China, much less information available to her, and a decisive, effective response way back in *January*.
Fair enough. I hadn't realised she was democratically-elected. My ignorance compounded by lack of coverage of Taiwan over here. Ardern, though, faced a comparable context to Johnson, and has, to say the least, come out of it rather better, so far … My initial thoughts on this are that it requires us to select our leaders from a rather wider pool than provided by winners of the Eton Wall Game.
We need to come out of lockdown as soon as possible for the sake of our sanity, economy and freedom. But in a safe way. So we can't reopen everything yet.
So Boris needs to present a clear plan on Sunday to us coming out with stages and timescales. This will maintain the support of the nation.
We don't want the wishy washy 'plan' put forward by the Scottish executive who seem happy to restrict people's freedom for as long as possible.
And we need to stop furlough after 30 June except for those businesses which legally cannot operate eg pubs.
Agreed, though as we locked down a week or two after Germany, France, Spain and Italy we should also open up a week or two after them as well and see how their lockdown develops first
Entirely correct HYUFD. I am not proposing any significant lockdown changes until 1 June. But Boris should announce these on Sunday to give businesses 3 weeks to prepare.
Some enlightened companies are already planning for it and making big changes for the start of easing. It is obvious from what we have seen what is going to happen. It is going to be bad for plenty, some smug Tories will soon get to see how what they counted as lazy indolent scroungers manage to survive at first hand. As said earlier they will not find it a bed of roses.
Withdrawing the furlough will encourage people to stand on their own feet. We need to keep the 'lazy indolent scroungers' to a minimum!
I'm going to start a new career as a freelance photojournalist. My first assignment is a quick trip to Snowdonia to snap the local coppers enforcing the lockdown. I need a nubile "darkroom assistant" to hold my zoom, but I realise this isn't the ideal place to advertise the vacancy.
You would be a bit late.
Plenty of photos of that have been published and with huge support from the local communities
I'll raise a painted sign "aros adref" (arhoswch, if you prefer) on the Shropshire border, facing west. In photojournalism there's always a market for a new angle - literally, in this case.
Pieces about the low numbers of the young dying from Corona are appearing in the press when we;ve been arguing about that stuff for days
Ditto pieces about the how bad the economic hit will be.
There was an extended piece today on R4 about the challenges of getting PL football back. Getting 22 of the fittest examples of humankind to play, and yes be in aerosolic distance of each other for 90 minutes.
The biggest criticism to be levelled at the govt imo is their failure to enlist PB contributors to:
a) dictate the timing and terms of the lockdown; b) build the track and trace app; and c) ask all the questions at the daily prezzers.
A huge error.
Tbh, the government has been wrong on the timing of the lockdown, continued flights into the UK, locking the private sector out of testing, locking the private sector out of the app.
Nothing in that was difficult to predict either.
Obviously nobody knows less about this stuff than me but even I know that the NHS are crap at this spoddy neckbeard stuff and Apple/Google are not crap at it.
Not just an NHS thing though.
One of the under-the-radar fiascos has been the scheme to replace free school meals. Initially, schools did their own thing, but now are expected to use a single voucher provider, which doesn't cover all shops and is struggling to keep up with demand.
That makes me very sad. Free school meals (whilst necessary) are a really hard thing for kids. I think personally I'd have a food card valid within schools for every child and the kids on free school meals would get theirs paid into automatically. No idea whether it would work.
Quite a lot of schools have moved to a cashless model in-school, either using an ID card or a fingerprint ID. Then either the family or the FSM system tops it up invisibly. It's got lots of advantages- partly the stigma thing you mention, but also efficiency and reduced potential for bullying.
Trouble is, how do you reproduce this when FSM kids aren't in school? And the trouble is that the government went for a big compulsory centralised website solution, which was the kind of thing you don't do if you understand websites.
The easiest way to have to make FSM work outside schools would be to plug it into the Universal Credit system. The issue with that is that half the parents are still on the old benefits system not UC.
I do actually have a little sympathy with the administrators on this, but other websites such as the one for furloughed workers and small business relief worked remarkably well under huge demand.
Small business relief isn't working everywhere - some councils seem to have been a lot more competent than others at getting the money sent out.
Mr. Meeks, you're aware there are wildly different demographics between Sweden and the UK, right?
A quick spot of googling throws out that Sweden has 64 people per square mile. The UK has 727. Sweden has a total population just over 10m. London has a population of nearly 9m (again, via Google).
And that's before we get to the probable earlier than initially thought spread of the disease which is far more likely to affect London and other parts of the UK than most of Sweden.
There's a big fat rising sun standing in the way of your argument.
Ever been to Japan? Try finding a blade of grass in Tokyo, the buildings topple off the horizon.You can;'t see the edge of the city.
People? they got loadsa them. All crammed in together in tiny but spotlessly clean domiciles. Jam packed very politely into lovely air conditioned and well maintained tube trains serviced by staff wearing superbly pressed uniforms and white gloves.
Open what you think is a large cupboard and it turns out to be a restaurant with fifty people in it
And there they go, getting on with their lives, respectfully torpedoing the arguments of the long lockdowners
Mr. Meeks, you're aware there are wildly different demographics between Sweden and the UK, right?
A quick spot of googling throws out that Sweden has 64 people per square mile. The UK has 727. Sweden has a total population just over 10m. London has a population of nearly 9m (again, via Google).
And that's before we get to the probable earlier than initially thought spread of the disease which is far more likely to affect London and other parts of the UK than most of Sweden.
There's a big fat rising sun standing in the way of your argument.
Ever been to Japan? Try finding a blade of grass in Tokyo, the buildings topple off the horizon.You can;'t see the edge of the city.
People? they got loadsa them. All crammed in together in tiny but spotlessly clean domiciles. Jam packed very politely into lovely air conditioned and well maintained tube trains serviced by staff wearing superbly pressed uniforms and white gloves.
Open what you think is a large cupboard and it turns out to be a restaurant with fifty people in it
And there they go, getting on with their lives, respectfully torpedoing the arguments of the long lockdowners
Checks with Patrick McKenzie (who lives in Tokyo) - Nope Tokyo isn't normal at the moment - 95% of neighborhood boutiques shut down.
Hancock says that Spanish published death figures don't include care home deaths - is that right?
Ridiculous comparing our figures with theirs if so. Especially with the mortifying reports of the Spanish military being called up to clear dead bodies out of care homes there.
It should be clear to anyone who's watched the news for the past two months that the situation here is bad but nothing like Italy/Spain.
Mr. Flashman (deceased), scrapping cash is insane.
If your bank account has a glitch, as has happened in recent memory, then you have zero money if you can't access it. But in a world with cash it's much easier to make do.
Not only that, there's no tracking and the government or financial organisations cannot slap on transaction taxes which are unavoidable.
Are we blaming HMG for activities in privately run care homes ?
Yep we commented on that earlier this week. Local NHS chiefs put pressure on care homes to take recovering patients without running Covid tests.
As I said then literally the only way you would have had to stop people arriving in your home would have been to force the NHS chief to sign a document accepting liability
Mr. Meeks, you're aware there are wildly different demographics between Sweden and the UK, right?
A quick spot of googling throws out that Sweden has 64 people per square mile. The UK has 727. Sweden has a total population just over 10m. London has a population of nearly 9m (again, via Google).
And that's before we get to the probable earlier than initially thought spread of the disease which is far more likely to affect London and other parts of the UK than most of Sweden.
There's a big fat rising sun standing in the way of your argument.
Ever been to Japan? Try finding a blade of grass in Tokyo, the buildings topple off the horizon.You can;'t see the edge of the city.
People? they got loadsa them. All crammed in together in tiny but spotlessly clean domiciles. Jam packed very politely into lovely air conditioned and well maintained tube trains serviced by staff wearing superbly pressed uniforms and white gloves.
Open what you think is a large cupboard and it turns out to be a restaurant with fifty people in it
And there they go, getting on with their lives, respectfully torpedoing the arguments of the long lockdowners
Checks with Patrick McKenzie (who lives in Tokyo) - Nope Tokyo isn't normal at the moment.
TBF it's much less abnormal than than the UK - a lot of places are shut down, but voluntarily, and it's less far-reaching than Britain.
However the key to being able to get away with a less drastic response isn't not doing anything, it's acting *fast*. The initial "we're closing schools, please cancel events and work from home where possible" request came when we were on maybe 100 cases total. Then we had a little complacency relapse during the Italy/Spain wave followed by a renewed response and peaked on around 500 cases per day.
Hancock says that Spanish published death figures don't include care home deaths - is that right?
Ridiculous comparing our figures with theirs if so. Especially with the mortifying reports of the Spanish military being called up to clear dead bodies out of care homes there.
It should be clear to anyone who's watched the news for the past two months that the situation here is bad but nothing like Italy/Spain.
Definitions of Covid deaths differ between countries. As I've continually stated the only valid comparison you could use is Excess deaths and that data will not be available for a long time.
Don't know if this has been mentioned...not seen this mentioned anywhere before. Incoming Guardian screaming about use of private companies again. Doesn't mean most of the criticisms aren't valid though.
The app’s software is being built by VMware Pivotal Labs
I covered it below. but will repeat it here (Paragraph 3 is the important Pivotal labs bit).
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
I don't agree with many of the criticisms of the government, especially those that required a tardis to fix problems long before this unexpected pandemic arose but when we do come to look into this afterwards I have little doubt that the way we have treated the most vulnerable groups in our society in care homes will be the subject that will hit hardest.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
You don't have to convince me, I am on the same page as you. I just hadn't seen it revealed before who was actually doing the heavy lifting of the coding.
What I am surprised by is Demis from Deepmind is on SAGE, did they ask him about this? Did he raise any concerns, because I am sure he has loads.
Comments
Plenty of photos of that have been published and with huge support from the local communities
Dell is throwing all those items into vmware as like HP they are splitting the less interesting hardware business from the (in theory) rapidly expanding cloud / consultancy / software businesses.
At this stage would you rather be in the position Britain finds itself in or the position Italy finds itself in?
We can't all sit on furlough - we know that. But with so many businesses to go pop mid-June onwards when they default on their rent again and furlough being chopped back, there are 6.3m people on furlough who predominantly are going to the dole not to work in July. If thats your policy and political persuasion - and it is - why not just say so?
On any sensible measure, Britain is near the foot of the table as things currently stand.
https://commentcentral.co.uk/what-the-nhs-can-learn-from-germanys-hospital-system/
England is the worst hit in Europe by a long, long way.
Germany are one extreme, Italy are another extreme. We are in the middle.
Has a greater percentage of the UK population had the disease compared to Germany?
We don't know which is why any comparison is nothing more than a safety blanket / baseball bat (take your pick).
Britain squandered the time it was given because its Prime Minister and government were negligent and overconfident.
Italy +90%
England & Wales +52%
'When you become anxious you become intolerant of other views'
Alastair fits that description quite well
No, stop. Reverse that. The EU states who legally couldn't close their borders which is why we had to Take Back Control closed theirs. And the sovereign UK left them open.
EU states Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Spain all closed their borders. Austria, Denmark, Germany, Slovenia partially closed borders with restrictions and checks imposed - that was all by 16th March. All impossible claimed Brexiteers. Yet happened. The UK? Come on in, we want your viral load to make people die here faster, it means we'll get herd immunity and we will carry out Three hundred thousand and thirty four, nine hundred and seventy four thousand tests. Huzzah!
How is our English Brexiteer exceptionalism working out vs these EU closed border checks quarantine slave states...?
It seems on PB we are giving the Government a free pass on everything else they have done to manage the pandemic, fair enough, hindsight is a wonderful asset.The Government's policy on pandemic air travel however should be the exception. Even an idiot knows that air recirculates throughout an aircraft's a/c system so even social distancing doesn't work.
Absolute and total insanity!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/03/can-learn-germany-butnot-privatising-national-health-service/
Since second world war analogies are in vogue, this would be analagous to Churchill cutting red tape in 1940.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b050n20z/churchill-2-to-conquer-or-to-die
Prime meat for Covid.
Hancock is going to have to fall on his sword for this - as the issue that destroys the implementation was highlighted by Apple and Google 3 weeks ago.
One of the under-the-radar fiascos has been the scheme to replace free school meals. Initially, schools did their own thing, but now are expected to use a single voucher provider, which doesn't cover all shops and is struggling to keep up with demand.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/how-the-governments-free-school-meals-voucher-scheme-is-leaving-children-without-food/
We are in the middle of a dense forest without a map, other places and countries which we know exist but can't see where they actually are, are shouting instructions at us based on what they have done and think they seeing.
The idea that we can actually look back when probably 20-30% into the journey and decide we have made the correct or wrong decisions is for the birds.
Let's remember it isn't even available to the Islander general public yet and this is a testing phase so whatever nonsense you're reading in the press is just that - nonsense. Those complaining about 'privacy' while using the internet, with a bank account, social media, NHS doctor, mobile phone and on the electoral register are incredibly stupid.
Italy's ends at April 4th for some reason for instance unless I'm looking at the wrong thing...
Your hatred of this government and absurd view HMG is responsible for the death of tens of thousands is pathetic
He's shaping up as Corbyn with a razor.
Some of the mistakes the government have made have been excusable, some seem mainly the responsibility of the scientific experts and some are scandalously negligent. No doubt there will a full inquiry in due course. I doubt it will make for a comfortable experience for the government.
This problem was solved a few years ago with AWS and Azure cloud services, it's really not that difficult any more.
God, am I pleased not to be working on public sector IT projects.
The view from some of us who are not of the Boris-faith is that errors have been made. These errors should be called out and reviewed to prevent reoccurrence. As was demonstrated by Mr Hancock slapping down Allin-Khan, any, even constructive criticism is unacceptable.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
Didn't Hames claim it was the 7th or 8th of March? Not sure how that works out.
(data from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095212/ )
And from
And, of course, as pointed out above, if the distribution drops off after that date, the contribution of the spread before the date is greater.
It doesn't work, and can't be made to work without throwing the whole thing in the bin and starting again from scratch.
Edit: also see comment above from @eek
Trouble is, how do you reproduce this when FSM kids aren't in school? And the trouble is that the government went for a big compulsory centralised website solution, which was the kind of thing you don't do if you understand websites.
True it does involve spending tommorow's money rather freely and he'll have some unpalatable chocies to make but he's had a very good war thus far.
A quick spot of googling throws out that Sweden has 64 people per square mile. The UK has 727. Sweden has a total population just over 10m. London has a population of nearly 9m (again, via Google).
And that's before we get to the probable earlier than initially thought spread of the disease which is far more likely to affect London and other parts of the UK than most of Sweden.
Go back to work > keep it safe > save the economy.
There you go, I've given you a slogan!
If your bank account has a glitch, as has happened in recent memory, then you have zero money if you can't access it. But in a world with cash it's much easier to make do.
Not only that, there's no tracking and the government or financial organisations cannot slap on transaction taxes which are unavoidable.
Pieces about the low numbers of the young dying from Corona are appearing in the press when we;ve been arguing about that stuff for days
Ditto pieces about the how bad the economic hit will be.
As for London Young Labour the Tories had exactly the same problem with their youth wings to the point, I believe, where they were so embarrassing they decided to disband them.
I do actually have a little sympathy with the administrators on this, but other websites such as the one for furloughed workers and small business relief worked remarkably well under huge demand.
No-one has ever been in this situation before, there is no playbook to use. So unlike other people I won't make judgement on things unless I know I know enough to make valid points.
Which is why when I comment on data it's on the basis that this is month 3/5 in a 12/24 month battle and when I comment on IT systems it's because I know an awful, awful lot about them.
Surreal.
Ever been to Japan? Try finding a blade of grass in Tokyo, the buildings topple off the horizon.You can;'t see the edge of the city.
People? they got loadsa them. All crammed in together in tiny but spotlessly clean domiciles. Jam packed very politely into lovely air conditioned and well maintained tube trains serviced by staff wearing superbly pressed uniforms and white gloves.
Open what you think is a large cupboard and it turns out to be a restaurant with fifty people in it
And there they go, getting on with their lives, respectfully torpedoing the arguments of the long lockdowners
Ridiculous comparing our figures with theirs if so. Especially with the mortifying reports of the Spanish military being called up to clear dead bodies out of care homes there.
It should be clear to anyone who's watched the news for the past two months that the situation here is bad but nothing like Italy/Spain.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48544695
Cash use is falling, with predictions that fewer than one in 10 transactions will be completed with notes and coins in 10 years' time.
As I said then literally the only way you would have had to stop people arriving in your home would have been to force the NHS chief to sign a document accepting liability
However the key to being able to get away with a less drastic response isn't not doing anything, it's acting *fast*. The initial "we're closing schools, please cancel events and work from home where possible" request came when we were on maybe 100 cases total. Then we had a little complacency relapse during the Italy/Spain wave followed by a renewed response and peaked on around 500 cases per day.
The app’s software is being built by VMware Pivotal Labs
https://order-order.com/2020/05/06/experts-respond-government-nhs-app-rebuttal/
That's the reality of it. The moment has passed.
Nonsense in the fact that the App is being asked to do something that both iOS and Android explicitly stops an App from doing.
The fact that the app seems to have the sort of message you would add to it after discovering said issue, while trying to hide exactly how big the issue actually is (see the screenshot earlier). You wouldn't believe the number of times TCS / Wipro have tried to pull such tricks on me / others.
And the fact that as Sandpit pointed out (as I missed it) that the company developing this app works on backend systems and could have easily missed the fact mobile phones had barriers (see paragraph 1) which would stop the data from being collected.
Heck, I can even see the argument being used that the bluetooth issue isn't a real issue as hey Apple / Google will let us get around it (hint they won't their entire business is built on data privacy).
There is literally nothing in this story which surprises me I can see exactly how each step of it occurred and as I said earlier Hancock will need to go.
Remember both Sandpit and I are senior IT people with years of experience here. We aren't posting to score political points, we are posting because this is a shitstorm that could have been avoided but it's equally obvious as to how we got to this point.
The absurd advice that people ceased to be infectious 7 days after symptoms led to people who were infected and infectious being transferred into groups that should have been in lockdown. Those groups were looked after by very poorly paid and largely unskilled staff who had access to almost no PPE at all and we did nothing about it. Then, perhaps understandably, we excluded the families of those residents who might have highlighted the inevitable risks. The result has been carnage, not just for those residents but many of their staff who were looking after highly dependent residents without the training or equipment that our hospitals have. It is truly shameful.
What I am surprised by is Demis from Deepmind is on SAGE, did they ask him about this? Did he raise any concerns, because I am sure he has loads.