Westminstenders: How many Dead Cats Do You Get In A Thunderstorm?

[RedToothBrush]

It never rains. It only pours.

What I wouldn't give for a bit of old fashioned drizzle right now.

4 years on and we are facing a torment of calamities. Brexit, serious political instability in the USA ahead of an election that Trump will refuse to lose even if he does, trade deals with the rest of the world put on 6 week deadlines, anger within the commonwealth, a sick weak dependent PM on the back foot and ill briefed, rampant growing corruption in the Tory party, woke nut jobs out of touch with reality, councils on the brink of bankruptcy and the whole covid-19 crisis.

Long was a fan of the New Deal (he pressured Roosevelt into coming up with it) until he realised that the funds wouldn’t be distributed by state politicians.

Honey that must be a local policy - loads of our nurses are on permanent nights.

It means they can do all of their hours over three long shifts, and are back at home to do the school run. Sleep in the daytime, pick the kids up at 3pm and cook tea, then off to work when their partner gets home from work. So no childcare required once all of their children are in school, four days off a week, and two full-time salaries coming in.

Obviously wouldn't work for a single parent as you’d need somebody there overnight.

Dots joining ?

Is Robert Jenrick safe from the sack because Boris Johnson is implicated in Westferry corruption scandal?

voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/06/27/is-robert-jenrick-safe-from-the-sack-because-boris-johnson-is-implicated-in-westferry-corruption-scandal/

Following on from that, in normal times, is there any way to get rid of a corrupt Prime Minister ? Now we know the total farce that is the Monarch.

public money "spaffed" at their wealthy friends, the Sercos, the Dysons,

Statement from James Dyson:
"Dyson people welcomed the Government’s challenge and, working round the clock, developed an entirely new ventilator in 30 days." "Mercifully, they are not now required in the UK but we don’t regret our contribution to the national effort for one moment. I have some hope that our ventilator may yet help the response in other countries but that requires further time and investigation."
"Dyson has spent around £20m on this project to date, I will be funding this and we will not be accepting any public money."

Wonderful, invented an entirely new ventilator which didn't work and at least had enough of a conscience to not accept public money for it. What a hero Dyson is.

Meanwhile firms like Penlon in Oxfordshire which have been making that sort of equipment for 50 or more years, could have been asked back in January if they could ramp up production. But they weren't asked. Much better to go for a Johnson show -'Look how my wealthy chums are so much better, yah booh sucks.'

"Dyson has spent around £20m on this project to date, I will be funding this and we will not be accepting any public money."

I had this vague notion a while back that - should he so choos - Jeff Bezos could put $1 billion up a week for a year, split into 1000 lots of $1,000,000 as investments into startups. That's 52,000 new companies in a year. One person.

I'm not saying he should. And there are obviously pitfalls. However the idea that one man could trigger 52,000 startups in a year without really worrying about where their next meal comes from is when your head starts wobbling without any help from anyone.

Peregrina
Wonderful, invented an entirely new ventilator which didn't work

I expect that 30 days wasn't enough time to invent an entirely new ventilator.The misleading part of your previous post was that James Dyson accepted public money for the venture.

Did we in fact run out of ventilators in the UK? I don't think we did. What happened to the joint procurement of EU ventilators (the scheme we missed out on) - I read that they didn't materialise on time.

The point is Clav we didn't need a new design if ventilator. Just ventilators - which companies a who are not Tory donors already make.

I am sure their time could have been better spent on things such as and functioning track and trace system, or a functioning education system for all the stress school kids.

www.ventilatorchallengeuk.com/

Penlon were involved in the Ventilator Challenge.

I talked about the Sercos, the Dysons, the Accountancy firms i.e. a generic term for the right wing Tories wealthy mates, who have mostly taken public money with great fanfare, and then failed to deliver.

But Clavinova has taken it to mean Dyson in person. Who may or may not have taken public money, but certainly enjoyed the publicity - perhaps to counteract his moving his production overseas, despite being an ardent Brexiter and supposedly backing the UK!

The challenge was led by Dick Elsy, who said :
Members of the VentilatorChallengeUK consortium continue to work around the clock to produce as many additional ventilators for the NHS as quickly as possible. To provide some context, Penlon and Smiths ordinarily have combined capacity for between 50 and 60 ventilators per week. However, thanks to the scale and resources of the wider consortium, we are targeting production of at least 1,500 units a week of the Penlon and Smiths models combined within a matter of weeks. Ventilators are intricate and highly complex pieces of medical equipment and it is vital that we balance the twin imperatives of speed of delivery with the absolute adherence to regulatory standards that is needed to ensure patient safety.” - Dick Elsy

That was from early April.

Who may or may not have taken public money

Apparently not:
“We have maintained full salaries and benefits, not furloughed any staff and not accepted any Covid-19 financial assistance but, like many companies, are facing a grave economic future.”

It's good to see that Penlon were involved. Note the dates: April. After the lockdown had started in the UK. My point still stands - why were Penlon and the other company, who have years of experience, not approached back in January? Why make a big hoo ha and go running to Dyson? Because he was a big Brexit noise. Because he needed publicity, are two reasons which spring to mind. Not because he could do the job, which he couldn't.

Time and time again from Brexit onwards this is what we see - the ferry company with no ferries, the satellite company which makes the wrong sort of satellite and is bankrupt in the US, the world beating track and trace app which had to be abandoned and on.

satellite company which makes the wrong sort of satellite and is bankrupt in the US

Other potential bidders included;
"the Paris-based satellite operator Eutelsat, which apparently has the backing of the French government and several other European Union member states"

The generic ventilator challenge was only launched on 14 March. Good guardian article - sensible engineering companies knew it was a big ask to design and build from scratch, so the Ventilator Challenge Consortium made sense. I suppose the government thought they shouldn't rule any options out. But I agree they should have started much earlier: again, I'm disappointed but not surprised.

link

Clav if we had the kind of care Germany had - people taken in to hospital way before turning blue for example - we wouldn't have had as many deaths. Part of this is because they would have been put on ventilators when they needed it. Before they died.

I read Dyson's were unusable and actually deadly. I also seem to remember he was indeed paid for 10k in advance, the govt "put an order in". Reinventing the wheel because you don't like experts is a fools game.

Ah no, I see now they "cancelled" the order when they realised they were death machines and would never be passed by MHA.
Was fanfare for flag waving Leavers as previously said.

Or reinventing the wheel because it's for your Brexit chums.....

Other potential bidders included;
"the Paris-based satellite operator Eutelsat, which apparently has the backing of the French government and several other European Union member states

Sure. Because a low earth satellite network is perfectly useful for some purposes - just not the one the U.K. needs it for.

JeSuisPoulet
Ah no, I see now they "cancelled" the order when they realised they were death machines and would never be passed by MHA.

I read that they were being designed as portable ventilators - for temporary/field hospitals and the back of ambulances (aka the scenes in Italy) - therefore not needed.

I also seem to remember he was indeed paid for 10k in advance, the govt "put an order in".

That seems a spectacularly low amount of funding if Dyson spent £20m on the project.

Clav if we had the kind of care Germany had - people taken in to hospital way before turning blue for example - we wouldn't have had as many deaths.

That might depend on the age group receiving ventilation in Germany - how many over 70s/over 80s received ventilation in Germany and survived?

@DGRossetti, no idea. Our actual, written laws have no provision for an amoral PM as the people who drafted them never thought that we (the people) would vote for such a crook. Needless to say,it's another good reason to have a written constitution.

You can ask the Parliamentary Commission to investigate, but they normally refer matters up to the PM. Your best hope is a police enquiry that creates enough embarrassment for the Party to remove them from office. Getting them out of politics entirely would require a by-election.

Are we now to believe that portable ventilators (a.k.a masks to supply oxygen to someone until they could get to intensive care?) had not ever been invented?