Coronavirus

[Dave2002]

The majority of people work to earn a living in order to provide for their families and to fund a few pleasurable activities.

Try talking about work-life balance to a warehouse worker, someone on a zero hours contract, the cleaners at our factories and offices. As for working from home, one of the things that infuriates me about Radio 4 programmes is that the presenters think everyone has that option - they do not.

[Rant over.]

I don’t disagree with you, but most of the people who do that work don’t get paid enough. Quite why, I don’t know.Others might say “capitalism, innit”, but I don’t think that’s all of the answer. Then there are the factory and business owners who will probably be happy to replace all the workers by machines - but in so doing they keep any profits for themselves, rather than distributing it to the workers they have successfully displaced. I don’t really understand how, why, these things happen.

[Pianorak]

I’ve got to physically attend a cardiology clinic at a hospital tomorrow. And I’ve got to travel by ambulance. I’m really scared. I don’t have a mask or any sort of protection. Just saying.

Best wishes - will be thinking of you.

Because of Covid-19 my next appointment will be at the Eye Unit in Windsor instead of Reading RBH Eye Clinic in. Wouldn't want to ask a friend to drive me there and not prepared to use public transport. Have expressed some concern about driving myself back home after the procedure, but was assured they might forgo using dilating eye drops which should mean I'll be safe to drive after a couple of hours. Can but hope they are right.

[LMcD]

Pssst! Do you, or anybody of your acquaintance, happen to need 400,000 dodgy medical items? Apparently the Minister who heralded the imminent arrival of the flight from Turkey had been warned by officials NOT to mention it at the Downing Street briefing.

[Count Boso]

Pssst! Do you, or anybody of your acquaintance, happen to need 400,000 dodgy medical items? Apparently the Minister who heralded the imminent arrival of the flight from Turkey had been warned by officials NOT to mention it at the Downing Street briefing.

On which subject: "Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said it was "reassuring" that British experts were "ensuring the best quality of equipment". "

Good to know that irony is not dead.

[oddoneout]

Pssst! Do you, or anybody of your acquaintance, happen to need 400,000 dodgy medical items? Apparently the Minister who heralded the imminent arrival of the flight from Turkey had been warned by officials NOT to mention it at the Downing Street briefing.

I can't be the only one wondering what 'safety standards' weren't being met, and whether that meant they were unusable in any context or just not for the purpose for which they were acquired. The cost of the failed mission could probably have paid for that number of items to be made in this country by companies already up and running and offering their services.

[teamsaint]

More selective reporting focussing on downside risk in most of the papers. The BoE is predicting a 15% drop in GDP for 2020,most of which is more or less guaranteed given Q2 drops in activity. However , one of the key things in their latest predictions is that the economy will broadly recover to its 2019 level in 2021,and that 2022 will see 3% growth, and unemployment back to the pre virus level of 4%.
Of course this could be all wrong,and the short terms is more or less bound to be tough but this longer term picture is important, and should be given due weight in reporting.There is very bad stuff going on, but willful scaremongering isnt doing anybody any good, well perhaps the government and the owners of the UK media.

Edit: actually, if I had to place a bet, it would be on the downside of the BoE figures for the next couple of years, but really, who knows ?

Heres the BBCs’s take on it, with the bad news in mega bold, and the better “news” tucked away at the end.

https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiKmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jb20vbmV3cy9idXNpbmVzcy01MjU2NjAzMNIBLmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jb20vbmV3cy9hbXAvYnVzaW5lc3MtNTI1NjYwMzA?hl=en-GB&gl=GB&ceid=GB%3Aen

[oddoneout]

I can't at the moment see the employment situation post-Corona being particularly good. The continued contraction of high street retail and failure of small businesses to survive the lockdown for instance has direct and indirect effects, none of which are likely to improve the pay and conditions of those looking for work, neither will post-Brexit removal of worker protections.

[zola]

I suspect Cummings is drip feeding stories to back up a premature relaxation of restrictions. The BBC are now resurrecting the 'it's no worse that a bad dose of flu really' line.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52543692

The chancellor's 'we will do whatever it takes' line also seems to be developing a coda, 'well, for a little while anyway'.

[Cockney Sparrow]

I suspect Cummings is drip feeding stories to back up a premature relaxation of restrictions.....

Utterly irresponsible - building up expectations - that was my reaction to the "headline" wording on Today, R4 8am this morning. That ? 10% who at the best of times have no awareness of or care for what 2metres looks like and for example are already up for Barbecues and brews with their mates will be making hay on the last of the warm days this weekend.....

And Johnson will announce his decisions (carefully imprecise I'm sure) on Sunday - not to Parliament - after all, the powers have been given away for the moment - but to the media, and even if its a modest relaxation, the numpties (to put it politely) amongst the population will be merrily going their own way......

The police have already made it plain "don't expect us to enforce the nuances of relaxation".

[LeMartinPecheur]

Pssst! Do you, or anybody of your acquaintance, happen to need 400,000 dodgy medical items? Apparently the Minister who heralded the imminent arrival of the flight from Turkey had been warned by officials NOT to mention it at the Downing Street briefing.

OK, they're not up to standard but can't they be put to some use somewhere, like care homes? Some protection is better than no protection surely?

[Cockney Sparrow]

OK, they're not up to standard but can't they be put to some use somewhere, like care homes? Some protection is better than no protection surely?

Too sensible - also issuing them will be followed by a wave of lawyers only too happy to litigate for negligently supplying them. Better to let the care sector workers wear their polythene aprons and improvised face shields - as long as HMG aren't in the frame for liability.

Care providers, thousands of private operators/companies don't have strong voices like the BMA (et al) to create about their abandonment - so they were abandoned to their fate. In fact, Hospitals shipped out patients to nursing and residential care to clear the decks for the Covid 19 wave and ITU expansion.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Too sensible - also issuing them will be followed by a wave of lawyers only too happy to litigate for negligently supplying them.

I'd quite like to read a judicial ruling that providing some protection was even more negligent than providing nothing But I suppose lawyers are paid to argue anything!

[Serial_Apologist]

I don’t disagree with you, but most of the people who do that work don’t get paid enough. Quite why, I don’t know.Others might say “capitalism, innit”, but I don’t think that’s all of the answer. Then there are the factory and business owners who will probably be happy to replace all the workers by machines - but in so doing they keep any profits for themselves, rather than distributing it to the workers they have successfully displaced. I don’t really understand how, why, these things happen.

Because they, like their workers, have to "make hay while the sunshine lasts". Systemic underlying explanations why are inbuilt into the inherent instability of the system, as I explained above - the bosses have to make profits to compete and keep their shareholders on board, or someone else will come along and take over the firm or do the work cheaper, either using workers off of the dole - itself just one negative consequence among many of the anarchic way in which capitalist production proceeds - or from (or in) poorer countries; the workers hand on their cumulative historic experience of the undependability of future prospects - for which they are accused of greed and "pricing themselves out of the market" - which they know their rich "betters" always have the means to hedge against. No doubt the bosses, who never wanted to pay higher wages than sufficient to keep workforces loyal, strong and healthy enough to make them stuff, have regrets for going along with mass consumerism in the post-WW2 period. It was literally a gamble it was hoped would pay off in terms of market enlargement, even though Employer A would be hoping Employer B wlould be paying "his" workforce higher wages so as to afford Employer A's products, while keeping his own wages down to stay profitable... and vice-versa, of course, Employer B. Meanwhile, in a Faustian pact, the working class would sell its ideological birthright for a future of mortgage indebtedness and product obsolescence, disguised as "fashion". Everyone was now trapped in capitalism's karma, and it could all be ascribed to the supposed inherent weakness of "human nature".

It really isn't that difficult to understand, though I guess a lot of people wilfully do!

(I'm starting to sound like MrGG!)

[zola]

Meanwhile....

European Union Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan has said there is no real sign that Britain is approaching trade talks with the EU with a plan to succeed and it appears set to blame any post-Brexit fallout on the economic shock from Covid-19.

Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Sean O'Rourke, Mr Hogan said: "Despite the urgency and enormity of the negotiating challenge, I am afraid we are only making very slow progress in the Brexit negotiations.

"There is no real sign that our British friends are approaching the negotiations with a plan to succeed. I hope I am wrong, but I don't think so.

"I think that the United Kingdom politicians and government have certainly decided that Covid is going to be blamed for all the fallout from Brexit and my perception of it is they don't want to drag the negotiations out into 2021 because they can effectively blame Covid for everything."

[johnb]

There is an article on the ITPro website about the NHS coronavirus app. These are a couple of quotes:

The contact-tracing app developed by the NHSX has been described as “a bit wobbly” by senior NHS employees, who told the Health Service Journal (HSJ) that it has so far failed security tests.

The anonymous sources revealed to the medical policy news service that the app had initially failed all of the tests required in order to be included in the NHS app library, including cyber security, performance and clinical safety.

My bold

Senior NHS sources told HSJ that the UK government was “going about it in a kind of a hamfisted way. They haven’t got clear versions, so it’s been impossible to get a fixed code base from them for NHS Digital to test. They keep changing it all over the place”.

In spite of all these issues, HSJ’s sources clarified that the app was not a “big disaster”.

Not unexpected.

There are some valid reasons to go down the centralised route rather than using the decentralised Apple/Google app that many other European countries are opting for. However, I suspect it has a lot to do with the Brexit mentality (we'll show johnny foreigner that we can do better, anyway we certainly don't want to copy what those EU countries are doing) - the same attitude that the government displayed with regard to ventilators, preferring to re-invent the wheel (Dyson for heaven's sake).

The full article: https://www.itpro.co.uk/software/dev...rce=newsletter