Westminstenders: Following the EU lead

[RedToothBrush]

Coronavirus poses a particularly Irish shaped question. How the UK responds to Irish plans for ending lockdown and whether Arlene continues to back an all Ireland plan will be fascinating to watch and see justified regardless of which way we go.

The UK for all its new found independence is looking very closely to the success / failure of EU strategies before making our own plan public. Mainly because we've yet to write one.

Johnson hasn't led much. He's delegated. Yet he gets all the praise for doing the sum total of fuck all and never being the bad guy. There always another fall guy to blame.

Economically we are stuffed and promises of a very quick bounce back don't look likely based on public confidence and willingness to return to places like pubs restaurants and shops.

Our ability to adapt to new conditions at short notice has been tested and businesses can not afford to do this again soon.

This is the background to which we go into talks. Both sides need an extension to serve their best interests. Johnson is determined to cut our nose of to spite our face for the sake of his legacy and to keep those paying the back handers and dodging tax happy.

Hancock has just said, "Where the Isle of Wight leads, Britian will follow..."

I'm genuinely terrified: Cut off from the world witho only 1950s tube trains to get about in. This is indeed our Brexit future.

I am surprised that they are banning accountants from filing claims. Its stupid and they will be forced to backtrack but in the mean time more people will end up on UC

Which sounds to me like the whole point. Job done.

....Please, Guvnor, want to buy our coloured sand?

^Apparently because it would be a data breach if we were to use our details to supply their data
the data that we use every year to do their tax returns^

DGR - I've only just looked at that Indie story. It looks like Serco is getting the call centres bit of the contract tracing, which isn't as impressive as Germany setting up their own system but is pretty standard for UK gov outsourcing. (Yes, it's crap, but it's pretty low level crap.)

The NHSx story in Computing is far more interesting, especially as Hancock has just been saying that the data doesn't leave people's phones. Late change under pressure/scrutiny? (Or just talking bollocks and hoping no-one notices?)

They can only go onto UC when they've burnt through almost all their savings

Apparently there has been a really good take up of the App on the Isle of Wight.

It has a Conservative MP with a 23,737 majority/56.2% of the vote.

Not sure everywhere will be as compliant

This is depressing, but rings true. How others see us... comparing our performance with the US and other countries...

Coronavirus: death rates and arrogance

...It’s just the US and the UK – so what might they have in common that none of the other English-speaking countries share?
Oh, wait a minute. Weren’t these two countries the superpowers that dominated the world one after the other for most of the past two centuries?
Might that have made them a bit arrogant? Unable to see the experience of other countries as relevant to their own situation? Reluctant to follow the advice of international bodies like the World Health Organisation (WHO)? Am I getting warm here?
Britain ticks all the boxes. It has a nationalistic government obsessed with the ‘greatness’ of the country’s past and unable to grasp the reality of its modest current stature. Hence the Brexit project, for example, but exactly the same attitude is manifest in its coronavirus policies...

...Wrong at every step, Prime Minister Boris Johnson must be very grateful to have Donald ‘Lysol’ Trump to make him look good by comparison.

Etc.

cyprus-mail.com/2020/04/28/coronavirus-death-rates-and-arrogance/#disqus_thread

More on that contact tracing app:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52532435

“NHSX has consulted ethicists and GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on the matter.”

Is checking with GCHQ a good thing?

I have Caulkhead friends who are looking forward to seeing the app make a right mess of things ....

Prettybird
The good people of HMP Isle of Wight repeatedly voted for a gentleman called Andrew Turner who was unable / not allowed to speak in public by the end of his tenure. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Turner_(politician)
At one stage every one of the secondary schools was in special measures
THe prison population is a significant driver on the economics.
The council has been notoriously corrupt for decades look up the Undercliff road project
If the Isle of Wight is the future
we are all doomed

The schools' bit was part of a government concerted effort/ plot to academise and remove the three tier system, mind...

The explanation of the app on today's briefing didn't make sense:
A) app logs contacts on mobile
B) mobile owner notifies nhs via app that they have symptoms - presumably uploading contacts list at that point
C) NHS notifies contacts via txt

Bluetooth has no idea what your mobile no is, (& cannot find it) so even if you submit your mobile no to the app it won't know (&cannot determine) the mobile nos of the contacts -
unless the app registers/receives a unique ID when it is installed and that ID & associated mobile are uploaded to NHS. Means that the app needs to get that ID from contacts, only feasible if the app changes the Bluetooth ID - buggering up any extant use of Bluetooth.

(A dumb design would be to set the name to the mobile - basically allowing nearby predators to call you.)

Piggy
Yup there was politics behind it but atrocious governance by the council played its part.
I love the Isle of wight, specially when its foggy and I cannot see it.

Frankie
Don't let facts get in the way of a good Government pronouncement

The explanation of the app on today's briefing didn't make sense:

Did you seriously expect it would ?

I once saw a display of knitted Smurfs in a window in Sandown that must have been there for 30 years. They had one of those semi transparent sepia plastic blinds to protect them from the sun. It was near the railway station.

I particularly enjoyed the new 3 part slogan that has been developed for the IOW that MH had to keep explicating.
. Download The App. Save Lives. Save The Nhs.

But - umm- also if you could stay at home, please. definitely don't go out. Save lives. Try the App. There's a good Island.

Isle of Wight ...

for some reason I keep remembering Josh Widdecombe dissing Exeter in 2016 ...

You know the poster shop Athena ? Exeter still has one ...

I can imagine the IoW branch of Athena in the a shopping mall, twixt a Woolworths and BHS ...

I particularly enjoyed the new 3 part slogan that has been developed for the IOW that MH had to keep explicating.

It just goes to show how absolutely incompetent these clowns are they missed:

(cl)app for the NHS

Tories

Crap for the NHS

is more like it

Have you all seen the priti patel interview with yvette cooper?

twitter.com/grahambsi/status/1256999799297097731

I'm no techie but I did say to dh as they were "explaining" how the app would work that there was no way it could be completely anonymised if it was then able to call you back

I struggle to understand how anyone who earns so much can be that incompetent...

I'd say I can't sleep well 3 nights out of 7 because I'm worrying, pouring over every tiny bit of a situation with a patient and agonising over whether I should have managed it slightly differently, could I have done better. I get up at 2am and write lists of things to check in the morning or discuss with someone more experienced

How do these people sleep at night?

Some gems on here this evening, thank you all. I particularly liked the Basingstoke protest and the growing awareness that no one seems to know what the app is meant to be reporting, how or to whom. Genius. The Asian countries who've had this in place since SARs must be pissing themselves at us right now. Must look as if the UK is doggedly setting up a pair of tin cans and string and declaring they are about to get television

Re the mental health problems potentially caused by the app - this is why you have a consultant tell you about any test results. Ethically dumping a possible (and frankly likely) false positive on someone remotely (they could be driving, at a funeral, etc) and potentially more than once - I'm assuming if two people near you or in the next building have it you'd get two alerts? - you could tip some already pretty fragile people over the top IMO. Zero sensitivity. It's flies in the face of autonomy and non-maleficence and again will break trust with the health system.

I guess they are assuming informed consent if you download the app? Again, we get back to just how informed that consent can be given the lack of understanding of the disease and lack of accurate data giving these alerts, for starters.

Matt Hancock became just white noise during the press briefing, so a lot of what he said was just buzzing in my ears

...but did I hear him say that because he'd had the virus, he was one of those being tested regularly to see if he had antibodies (fair enough) - but that he didn't necessarily have any?