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.

"When you have to explain the terminology before explaining the thing itself, you add an extra layer of potential confusion."

That's the intention ...

"I've just realised that this hiding of the 4.75million Pillar 2 test results has made me really really angry
how very dare they deliberately endanger the population like that"

The very wealthy have large estates to isolate themselves

This govt don't give a shit about the the remaining 99.9% of the population

What happens when you employ an accountant to do a public health official's job.

Jennifer Williams @JenWilliamsMEN
On pillar 2. There’s been a bit of a mystery around the ‘gdpr’ problem that meant this data didn’t go to councils. One public health official says they reckon Deloitte - and everyone else procured by govt - were never told to notify this as a noticeable disease 1/

By default, this is a notifiable disease. But if that fact isn’t made clear by the govt people who hired you, you don’t necessarily collect the data accordingly. So, it seems, they didn’t. It wasn’t ‘robust and systematic’. “Hence the reluctance to share.”

Deloitte - as an outsourcer - would not automatically know that this was necessary.

This was ‘a rush to deliver activity without thinking through how you tackle the consequences’.

I note:

www.gov.uk/guidance/notifiable-diseases-and-causative-organisms-how-to-report

Registered medical practitioners: report notifiable diseases

Registered medical practitioners (RMPs) have a statutory duty to notify the ‘proper officer’ at their local council or local health protection team (HPT) of suspected cases of certain infectious diseases.

Complete a notification form immediately on diagnosis of a suspected notifiable disease. Don’t wait for laboratory confirmation of a suspected infection or contamination before notification. Consult the PHE Notifiable Diseases poster (PDF, 1020KB, 1 page) for further information.

Send the form to the proper officer within 3 days, or notify them verbally within 24 hours if the case is urgent by phone, letter, encrypted email or secure fax machine.

If you need help, contact your local HPT using the postcode lookup.

For more detail on reporting responsibilities of RMPs, see page 14 of Health Protection Legislation (England) Guidance 2010.

All proper officers must pass the entire notification to PHE within 3 days of a case being notified, or within 24 hours for urgent cases.

This sounds suspiciously like Deloitte's failed in their statutory duty to report notifiable diseases to PHE.

This sounds suspiciously like Deloitte's failed in their statutory duty to report notifiable diseases to PHE.

And Johnson/Cummings are going to do what exactly....?

This sounds suspiciously like Deloitte's failed in their statutory duty to report notifiable diseases to PHE.
Or PHE fucked up writing the contract specification to get the right result .....
and Deloitte will not have overstepped the spec for fear of getting sued

lets be honest Deloitte have been rubbish
but PHE have proven themselves utterly unfit for purpose in all areas

Its not PHE who wrote the contract.

Could De Loitte could be sued for failure to report?

Who hired Deloitte then ?

THey could only be sued for non compliance with their contract
and reporting to people outside the contract is a no no
as they are not a public body

Central government.

It wasn't PHE who hired and appointed Deloitte- that's part of the problem. I have read somewhere they had nothing to do with the contract , and also part of the reason they have been given the Numbers. So must be Matty or Dom?

On 30 March, a week after Boris Johnson announced a series of strict measures to combat COVID-19, a Deloitte crisis cell was established in the Cabinet Office to deal with PPE procurement for NHS staff.

And

As well as working on PPE procurement for the Cabinet Office, Deloitte was recruited by the Department of Health and Social Care to help create a network of up to 50 testing facilities around the UK. The process was much criticised, with hospital bosses wanting to oust the firm last month due to poor performance.

www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/useless-deloitte-accused-of-ppe-failings-amid-covid-19-deal-secrecy/

mrsL / RTB
Oh shit its one of the emergency contracts
which were done bypassing the procurement systems
so no wonder Deloitte have stuck to
the exact letter of what they were asked to do
collect samples for analysis
rather than the spirit of what they were asked to do
run a testing system for a notifiable global pandemic

Listening, I've talked previously about the problems encountered with De Loittes and them being used in the outsourcing of services in local government.

Its a HUGE issue thats well known because of the lack of transparency and the knock on problems its causing.

No one can get any data from them and they aren't subject to Freedom of Information Requests.

RTB
I audit public sector contracts with private sector companies.
I've also worked for those same accountancy firms.
I've also worked for the public sector bodies.

Yes, the big consultancy firms are sharks and are given much too much leeway
but in this case the fault lies wholly and squarely in Downing Street

• cutting out the LA experts
• bypassing the procurement system
• speccing the project badly
• overseeing it even worse
• using the same clique of advisers

Yes, the contract should not have been issued
but once it was, I'd be amazed if Deloitte will have breached it in any way at all

The Deloitte's thing is very interesting...

I'm involved with county public health covid response (long story). I don't work for council, but a lot of other public health experts are trying to help them. For some reason Deloitte's people were invited a few times onto our calls. They were data analysts supposed to be doing something very clever that would be revelatory to help us plan local response... I emailed a colleague on the calls saying "WTF do data scientists know that would help us?"

They never did anything helpful to the group, as far as I could tell. I wondered what they got paid for being on the telecons, how they got involved & sold selves in.

Nick Cohenn@NickCohen4

Just been talking to @leicesterliz [local MP] who says

Leicester not given virus info because Hancock signed testing contract with Deloitte and did not include the instruction to pass data on to the local authorities who could actually use it.

I'm surprised at the surprise if I'm honest. We knew Deloittes wasn't giving LA's numbers in early May. Without govt intervention (hahahaha) nothing was going to change. Like a pp I haven't bothered with the "numbers" since end early April when it was clear no one was actually trying to streamline it (other than ONS which is delayed and cannot be used for prevention) or have it useful in any form of actual usable data. I wrote posts about my analyst friends and said they were idiots for trying to use said data...

I wonder if Deloittes joined those calls to remind you they had figures? Or, more likely, to cover their own backs and check you guys weren't discussing how to get them. They certainly won't have broken any contracts. Everyone I know who has ever worked for them has been miserable but highly intelligent and risk adverse and given a leg in by private school friends

Just catching up....So if I understand this all correctly (from the FT article) the government only reported daily coronavirus test results processed by hospitals. I think we kind of knew this?

But what is off the scale of astonishing is that we didn't know is that these statistics covered only about 10 per cent of all cases.Is that reallyright?

I get that Deloittes undertook the much larger Pillar 2 community testing and only told the government not PHE or local authorities because the gov commissioned this data just for ..what- their own private knowledge.

Also what the hell is Hancock muttering about data protection for - did he really do that?! It's like saying " ooo can't do that luv 'elf n safety". He really must think everyone else is stupid. Data protection mostly protects processing of data from identifiable people so the data isn't stored using identifiable individuals' names and addresses.And anyway there is a public health exception- the ICO specifically says on its website that data protection will not stop organisations sharing data they need to share during the pandemic.

" we do not consider that any of the legislation we oversee should prevent organisations taking the steps they need to in order to keep the public safe and supported during the present public health emergency. There is plenty of flexibility built in to the legislation for organisations to use in such times, including some specific public health related exemptions."

ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/policies-and-procedures/2617613/ico-regulatory-approach-during-coronavirus.pdf

lonelyplanet
I am angry because the government appears to have deliberately endangered lives
which is utterly unforgivable

I went to go to Ikea this morning but bailed out when I saw the 200+ people in the queue

I then went to the supermarket and the lady behind me there was an Ikea employee in uniform with name badge
she said its been like that ever since they opened in June

In the supermarket (the naice one but in a student area)
about 1/4 of people were wearing masks
many little old ladies happily smiling at everybody and buying up the wine department

I did not wear a mask.
I have no idea what my risk is by not doing so.
nor does anybody else it seems

Everyone should be angry, but similarly to Brexit with it's rights and regulations stripping for the general public, people don't seem to be.

We also braved town today, a mix of needing to pay in a cheque, dog grooming (black claws!) and getting inner tubes for dd's bike. We both wore masks and I think for the 1.5hrs we were in town we say literally 5 people wearing masks and 3 of those were Asian tourists/students. Shops had queues outside, people in huge groups, lads on bikes flying through as normal making cat calls at us for wearing them, literally double takes from a lot of more elderly people and general feeling that people were staring at us. It's insane.

Wearing a mask isn’t about protecting yourself, but about protecting others. It’s another failure in getting the correct message across 🙁

Rockyroadster
I know several old people who are utterly fed up with being expected to rot in their own homes until they die

• opera, ballet, theatre, galleries, concerts have been taken away from them
• family time has been taken away from them
• travel has been taken away from them
• time with friends has been taken away from them

and when they see Dominic Cummings and Stanley Johnson getting away with it they are likely to go to the shop without a mask.

My DSis and her partner are here, quarantining for 2 weeks before travelling onwards to another EU country, via 2 different EU countries, to try and ensure she can keep her right to work and remain in the place she's lived in for 2 decades.

They are v worried that he won't be allowed across borders because he has no urgent reason to travel - other than driving her, as she doesn't drive. Then she'd have to take numerous trains and buses.
They have to get a COVID test here and email the negative result to the authorities within 96hrs of entering the country, or face serious consequences. If it's positive, they are screwed.
Stress levels are fairly high.

Watching Stanley Johnson blithely flout the rules when there is little at stake for him beyond letting out his villa is only increasing our anger at the shitstorm caused by people like him and his fecking son.

missclimpson
I wasn't denigrating UK pensioners, just pointing out that things won't be so straightforward in future and will require a specific skill set.

I've lived in France for 25 years and speak fluent French.
I still found the process and paperwork for acquiring nationality a total minefield (I had to provide each and every one of the 12 addresses I have lived at, with dates...), and am frequently unsure what is being asked of me when I am contacted by the tax services or have to contact them, so I often double-check to avoid submitting the wrong documents or checking the wrong boxes.

I would hate to have to face French bureaucracy without a pretty sure grasp of the language and mindset.