Westminstenders: A test of logistic planning

[RedToothBrush]

We are witnessing a demonstration in Government crisis management.

For the past week journalists have asked the same questions and politicians have said they've already done it / are doing it in the near future. But as time wears on, the inability to produce the answers or demonstrate results is proving illusive.

This will have consequences.

It is a demonstration in how planning has proved to be lacking in certain areas.

With Brexit in mind, the lack of vision, coordination with business and wider capability and capacity this does not bode well.

[LouiseCollins28]

The Times is behind a paywall and so is most of the Telegraph, so I haven’t read much of either of those. This from the Mail is admittedly pretty scathing, and from what is written here, so it should be.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8180103/Public-Health-England-passes-buck-insisting-part.html

I don’t know anything of the background of the writer. There are some intersesting points though, for which the Govt do deserve criticism. Hancock, for example “appealing for help from the wider industry” is utterly absurd!

Matt, you don’t need to “appeal for help” my friend, you need to pay people if you want them to give you a service. These other labs are presumably private companies, if you (actually we) ain’t paid for the tests, they ain’t going to get run.

A “shortage of chemicals”, if true, is also a serious failing. Either they can be made? In which case chemistry labs should now be churning them out by the tanker full, or they need to be bought ready made and stockpiled?. If they needed to be bought and stockpiled, that’s a more serious failing.

[ICouldHaveBeenAContender]

Louise the time line in the Mail article is sobering.
March 12 - testing is abandoned.
March 18 - we need to ramp up testing.

[ListeningQuietly]

Louise
All you need to do with any newspaper is go to the home page and then scroll down through the headlines
you can get a pretty rapid feel for their view
OR
Go to Google news and pick a topic and compare the multiple headlines ....

[GeistohneGrenzen]

pmk

[ListeningQuietly]

Snigger
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/02/arron-banks-fails-to-use-european-laws-to-avoid-paying-162000-tax-bill

[BigChocFrenzy]

Louise It is possible the Uk made a poor choice of test, that required ingredients made of raw materials we don't have
but the govt made no effort to move to better tests, or to buy ingredients

This is some of what happened in Germany - and should have happened in the UK too:

Germany had ready an epidemic / pandemic plan based on saving people, not sacrificing them for herd immunity

• At the first hint of an epidemic in January, research labs were instructed to develop a CV test that could if necessary be produced 100% in Germany by the million
  
  
• As soon as CV looked like it could reach Europe, the large German pharmaceutical & chemicals industries were ordered by the federal govt to mass produce testing kits.
  The govt repeatedly increased orders of all med gear & kits, as the scale of the pandemic became clear
  
  
• the large network of laboratories around the country were ordered to gear up to process many thousands of tests per day
  This is a problem for the UK, which - under both parties - closed labs
  
  
• the health service was readied to handle a pandemic and immediately notified the govt they needed far more ventilators for critical care beds
  They normally have high spare capacity
  
  
• Specialised manufacturers were ordered to boost production of medical kit
  e.g. Merkel ordered 10,000 ventilators early on from the largest manufacturer and added orders to the others
  When 45,000 have been delivered, Germany will then export to other EU members in need.
  
  
• large numbers of public health workers were organised into teams to trace contacts of any infected people
  
  
• health service teams were organised to monitor the health of infected people at home, to ensure early treatment if symptoms worsened and hence reduce emergencies
  
  This is why Germany is performing 500,000 tests per week vs 8,000 per day, not every day in the UK
  Why Germany with 80,000 cases still has 45% spare ICU bed capacity and has taken in critical cases from Italy & France

[BigChocFrenzy]

It's so frustrating
The UK should have been the one showing the way

(it was always said in the EU that they could depend on the UK being the adult in a crisis, even if sometimes a pain the rest of the time)

At least the govt should have done what it could with what it had and avoided so many cockups

[DrBlackbird]

It is the governments job to be accountable to the electorate at election time (not to the media!) and before or during 2024 they will be.

I am sorry but this is simply just not true. A free and independent press is one of the most critically important facets of any democracy in holding government to account. They have the resources and reach to do so far more than any individual citizen can do. It goes horribly wrong for us as individual citizens when the press is bought or muzzled.

[AuldAlliance]

The UK is clearly not the adult in the room any longer.
Raab? Truss? Patel? These people are worryingly out of their depth, because their raison d'être was not to be competent but just to nod along with BJ about getting Brexit doing and building fictional hospitals.
At least one of the Brexit supporters on MN mentioned when BJ was elected that he was like a toddler and said how very refreshing that was.
Less so now, but they might not admit it.

[DGRossetti]

It's usually only wars that can cause leaders across the world to be compared so critically ...

This must be a nasty shock to the media, when what is happening in other countries is very relevant to us.

[Peregrina]

No offence to toddlers, but how many could look after sick people?

There are competent people among the Tory ranks, but Johnson took good care not to offer them any Cabinet posts.

[ListeningQuietly]

Johnson only promoted Rishi because Saj left him in the lurch.
I think he'll regret it.

By this time next week we'll have a Labour front bench

[Peregrina]

I did wonder how the Saj felt about it. Is he glad he's dodged a bullet - which came about because he had a modicum of conscience?

[HairBands]

PMK

[Mistigri]

Good John Crace article on Hancock's press conference just gone up on the Guardian website.

tl;dr Hancock can be a bit of a pillock but he and Sunak are the two grownups in the cabinet. He's started copying the French health minister (this is a good thing) by actually answering questions and being honest about mistakes and shortcomings.

[boatyardblues]

Evening all.

[BubblesBuddy]

San left him in the lurch?! Saj was effectively sacked. He lost his advisers and would have been a puppet of no 10. The new Chancellor didn’t care because no one had heard of him and he wanted the job.

[BubblesBuddy]

Saj of course!

[BigChocFrenzy]

Saj was pushed out

[LouiseCollins28]

Do people actually read what I write or just rage?

At election time, to whom should the government be accountable? the media or the voters?

At no point did I say a government shouldn’t be held to account by the media, of course the should. My point is the government don’t have any form of “contract” if you will with the media, with the voters, they do.

[BigChocFrenzy]

NY City has over 92,000 Cases and 2,300 Deaths

New Yorkers fleeing city face fear and hostility from upstate neighbors

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/new-yorkers-fleeing-city-conronavirus-fear-hostility-upstate-neighbors

Food banks are reporting unprecedented demand across the US as millions lose jobs

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/02/us-food-banks-coronavirus-demand-unemployment

[colouringinpro]

pmk

[LouiseCollins28]

Yeah I bet they do! NY should be on lockdown, no question.

[AuldAlliance]

Given that the media are pretty much the only channel available for the gvmt to communicate with their voters just now, in the absence of parliamentary debate, they do have a contract with the media - or with their voters via the media, if you prefer: to be as transparent and truthful as possible and not to lie blatantly about obvious errors, like the procurement cock up or how many tests they are capable of doing and when.

Not using words like sedulously when defining - ideally as clearly and effectively as possible - how people should behave during a huge sanitary crisis is surely part of the PM's contract with the electorate.

[LouiseCollins28]

Absolutely agree that govt should not lie. Also the point about “in the absence of parliamentary debate” is a damn good one. I hadn’t thought of it like that, I admit. Participation in an election does create a relationship between the voter and the govt that the media don’t share, IMO.

I guess my issue is that the media are already powerful and usually the voters are not. Also, to the extent they do hold the government to account, they often do it for their own ends IMO. Boris as a communicator can be crap, he can be good too, but he can certainly be rubbish at times.