Westministenders: Brevid

[RedToothBrush]

The government have FINALLY started to treat no deal brexit and covid as one entity in terms of fucking the economy.

On the one hand you have one camp who think they can sneak No Deal through as a consequence of Covid. On the other you have people who realise that it might be quite a good idea not to doubly screw your entire economy and to continue to be able to import medical supplies freely.

We now no that No Deal Brexit will involve passports to get into Kent and 7 mile queues of trucks because this has passed the lips of Gove. Y'know one of those who has been denying this for the past 4 years and presenting it as 'scaremongering'.

We are now firmly into the end game where businesses have to make plans based on the government plans and technology. Y'know the ones that aren't complete yet despite it only being 2 months to go.

Johnson has today done an interview about covid restrictions in the NE in which he got all the detail wrong. Its almost as if he forgot the lines he was instructed to recite and have no fundamental understanding of what rules he's putting into place to control the lives of the population.

As we lurch into October, there is speculation of full local lockdowns being brought in to try and deal with the spiralling number of cases which have to be the result, in no small part, of a dire lack of local testing facilities in the North of England. Meanwhile we've got The App finally. The one that doesn't work and the police and many health care staff are being advised not to use cos its so bobbins and will lead to them constantly isolating needlessly. Thats just something the rest of us have to contend with.

The feeling is that Cummings is up for No Deal. Johnson has been brainwashed into it, which lets face it, isn't too hard given how hard of thinking he is. However there is a growing sense that Johnson may now bottle it and declare victory in the jaws of defeat. That might be a premature hope.

We await the answer and the all important question of whether Christmas is indeed cancelled - that is for everyone who hasn't already cancelled it due to financial hardship...

I remember when my firm introduced Excel. It was wonderful, so much better than what had gone before. That was in about 1991!

FFS - is this the best they can do with their World Beating Track and Trace with Dido. Words would fail me but it's par for the course with them.

Excel is bloody useful - if used well for its intended purpose. This test and trace cockup is the opposite.

@BigChocFrenzy

Zarah Sultana MP*@zarahsultana*

The Conservatives have spent £12 billion on Test and Trace, with private companies like Serco having been handed fortunes to run it.

And now the system is unravelling because it was using Excel spreadsheets.

Scandalous.

Not to mention utterly bizarre. I've spent enough time around government to be able to imagine a situation in which civil servants fell back on Excel because there was no central system/they didn't have licenses at scale for anything else/the ministerial order was to JFDI/etc, but this was outsourced. So did that mean it was part of the brief?

I've also spent enough time around consultancies to know that the gulf between the IT/tech practices and the industry verticals can be pretty big. The verticals can mirror the culture and practices of their clientele extremely faithfully. So did the "public services practice" partners not actually speak to any of the IT ones?

Either way, the fact they've ended up here is damning.

There was also a comment that because of the way the data is grouped the 64k excel lines actually represent only 1400 samples - Implying a multi-line feed (46 lines) for each sample.

It's quite hard to envisage the data set behind that - apart from ID, dates and result I might guess name,age, addresses of test and tester but..
If that is true its a truly mind bogglingly inept design.

It could be explained by taking the feed directly from the lab instruments rather than via a lab information system - so you'd get the calibrations, sample values, date, time etc line by line - but no address/ID details - just a sample ID from the barcode

Given the speed the labs were set up I might guess its possible they didn't implement a LIMS in each lab - if that is true its also extraordinarily bad laboratory practice.

Actually, thinking about that level of folly it can't be true - so the 1400 bit has to be a red herring.

The Register online news site for the IT world is one very good place to go for a knowledgeable look at this story.
www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/excel_england_coronavirus_contact_error/

It also asks anyone knowing anything no-one else does about the issue to contact El Reg so it may be worth watching for more.

Oh, and it calls La Harding "Dido, Queen of Carnage".

Administrative incompetence in a government-commissioned-and-specified outsourced system costing billions? Here's a squirrel which at least has the relevance of demonstrating how administrative error is not new:

🐿 "Words such as apron (napron), adder (nadder), notch (otch) and nickname (ekename) were formed by mistake because of a phenomenon called ‘rebracketing/metanalysis/misdivision’ in which the listener misinterprets where the word and its article join. Therefore, spaffing £12 billion on your mates' private companies to pocket most of it for themselves and pay interns peanuts to just C&P stuff into Excel, resulting in the loss of 10000s of COVID tests, is fiiiiiiiiiine!" 🐿

Excel is bloody useful - if used well for its intended purpose. This test and trace cockup is the opposite.

This. It has its limits but in a business environment its big advantage is that you don't need to get the IT department involved your projects - and unfortunately in many corporate settings, people avoid getting IT involved because of the risk of getting an over-complex solution that doesn't actually do what you want it to do. (My employer spent many millions on a new bespoke company-wide IT system that in its initial configuration was not able to measure one of our key business performance indicators).

What I don't understand is how this process didn't fall over much earlier, you don't have to get anywhere near Excel's sheet size limits for files to start getting unwieldy and slow.

that the testing catastrophe was "the most shambolic thing to happen to a Microsoft program since Kelly Rowland sent Nelly a text on Excel in the Dilemma video and got mad that he didn't reply"

My favourite quote from the reg, Cheers Chers

Where I work, the default reaction to solving any sort of problem is to create a new, poorly designed, poorly functioning Excel spreadsheet to deal with it. Then someone breaks it and it's abandoned for a newer poorly functioning version.

@pointythings

Excel is bloody useful - if used well for its intended purpose. This test and trace cockup is the opposite.

Even a noddy MySQL database and someone with my SQL skills (intermediate) would have been a better decision.

But we return to the adage about when the only tool you have is Boris Johnson - you are fucked.

This isn't really a great advert for a country with pretensions of leading the world in tech. I bet India and Pakistan have done a much better job - probably knocked up a custom app suite twice over.

When a previous employer tried to move to Baan (1990s rival to SAP) it took the consultants longer to hunt down all the rogue spreadsheets and access databases than it did to actual design the system. Because some only got used once a year ...

In this case, the Guardian understands, one lab had sent its daily test report to PHE in the form of a CSV file – the simplest possible database format, just a list of values separated by commas.

This must be a red herring from the Guardian - John Hopkins in the US store their COVID 19 data in separate ".csv files for each day."

@Clavinova

In this case, the Guardian understands, one lab had sent its daily test report to PHE in the form of a CSV file – the simplest possible database format, just a list of values separated by commas.

This must be a red herring from the Guardian - John Hopkins in the US store their COVID 19 data in separate ".csv files for each day."

Oh good. You're back.

Can you please answer my question and tell us what you believe to be the relevance of the leaving cert issue to the current thread as I'm failing to see its relevance?

It has its limits but in a business environment its big advantage is that you don't need to get the IT department involved your projects -

The problem with that - BTDTGTTS - is that when it breaks (because a key person fucks off for whatever reason), and the support desk get a furious call from the director who needs that data now it's almost impossible to fix or support.

The early days of SaaS were a nightmare as all over big organisations people with budgets, credit cards and a dislike of protocol were able to sign up for all sorts of quickly-became-mission-critical services. Which would tick along until inevitably the clowns running them upgraded or improved them, breaking them and - once again - the poor support desk get calls about systems they have no idea about. The best one being a fully fledged recruitment system that was bought by HR with zero knowledge of IT. Until it broke (at which point I was called in ). It was through that I learned of NIs unique personal data requirements, as we had an office in Belfast.

Ooh, a point-missing squirrel! 👀👈👀👉

OchonAgusOchonO
However, I ask again, can you explain the relevance of the leaving cert issue to the current thread as I'm failing to see its relevance?
I'm asking as I'm curious. The more you refuse to answer or try and deflect from the question, the more curious I become.

I did tell you that I was going out for the rest of the day/evening and I had a long drive. I had a very pleasant time - thank you for asking.

To answer your curiosity; the beauty of a public forum such as Mumsnet is that you get a range of information, opinions and ideas -instead of just an echo chamber. Therefore, if I think something is interesting and relevant to the thread, I can post it here even if you don't find my point particularly interesting and relevant. However, if you would prefer to set up your own private forum I promise I won't ask to join.

I am working on an excel spreadsheet at the moment.
I still miss Lotus 123 2.2 with WYSIWYG

If I was handling a large amount of data I would go ask DD who knows how to use big databases
because I'm not stupid or arrogant enough to think that CSV cuts it for time critical clinical data

The new import customs program is probably going to be in a Word table

Chersfrozenface
Yes, I know there are regular posters in EU member states, and very useful their postings are for genuinely enlightening comparative information)

It's not very enlightening if you only get one point of view from each country;

"Glitch leads to Germany's coronavirus tracing app 'not working for millions.'"

"Millions of users of Samsung or Huawei smart phones were warned too late or not at all about possible contact with a coronavirus positive person, the newspaper reported."

www.thelocal.de/20200724/glitch-leads-to-corona-warn-app-not-working-properly-or-millions

If you have a .csv file for each day, it leads itself to a sheet per day.

You can of course stack sheets in 3-D spreadsheets. But to be honest I would trust this shower of useless incompetent cronies to find the on switch.

This really is no different to the dying days of the Third Reich where they couldn't organise a coffee morning (well ersatz morning) because they'd cronied up the corridors of power so badly no one had a fucking clue any more.

Remember Michael "we dont' need no experts" Gove ? This is where you arrive when you get on that train. And it only took an amazing four years. The generation we are going to look to to fix this shitshow haven't even started school yet. Maybe they never will.

Who knew you'd come down faster than you went up ?

OchonAgusOchonO
However, I ask again, can you explain the relevance of the leaving cert issue to the current thread as I'm failing to see its relevance?
I'm asking as I'm curious. The more you refuse to answer or try and deflect from the question, the more curious I become.

As Clav can't (or won't) satisfy your curiosity I offer my own fallible memory of the event. It was pointed out how badly Gav had done with A level results. Clav told us how badly ROI had done with exam results (relevance to discussion - nil). mathanxiety queried Clav's knowledge of ROI exams and Irish leaving cert ... and we are where we are. It is just squirrel after squirrel to attempt to divert attention from the continued failures of the Tory govt. I just walk on by, whistling tunefully, when squirrels arrive. Nuts to them I whistle ...

@Clavinova - Glad you had a pleasant time

To answer your curiosity

Unfortunately, you haven't answered my question and so, haven't satisfied my curiosity.

the beauty of a public forum such as Mumsnet is that you get a range of information, opinions and ideas -instead of just an echo chamber.

Very true.

Therefore, if I think something is interesting and relevant to the thread, I can post it here even if you don't find my point particularly interesting and relevant.

Absolutely. I agree with you completely. However, posting points that are not connected or related in any way simply results in a series of statements rather than a discussion or a debate. But if you explain the relevance of your point to those of us who lack your insight, we can gain the benefit of your point of view.

Others on this thread seem to be equally confused by the relevance of your post regarding the leaving cert to this thread. However, you seem to think it is relevant. Maybe look on explaining its relevance as a public service?

You presumably posted to make a point. If I, and others, don't understand your point, they surely explaining the logic behind your post will achieve your goal of making that point?

So we find out why the Irish Leaving system is relevant to Brexit???

What I also notice is that the cut n pastes are not about the FU's that Trump makes - I have to assume that he is as perfect as Johnson and cronies in some people's world.

If I was handling a large amount of data I would go ask DD who knows how to use big databases

This isn't anywhere near a big database. Seriously. You could do it on a decent spec PC in MySQL for free if you run Linux. No need to pay the Microsoft tax.

When I was crunching telematics data, I had a database of a few thousand cars over 3 months with data points every minute. Even then it didn't exceed 100,000,000 rows and 40Gb. The laptop I am writing this on has a 120Gb drive. And that's only because I swapped out the 500Gb one it came with.

[quote Clavinova]Chersfrozenface
Yes, I know there are regular posters in EU member states, and very useful their postings are for genuinely enlightening comparative information)

It's not very enlightening if you only get one point of view from each country;

"Glitch leads to Germany's coronavirus tracing app 'not working for millions.'"

"Millions of users of Samsung or Huawei smart phones were warned too late or not at all about possible contact with a coronavirus positive person, the newspaper reported."

www.thelocal.de/20200724/glitch-leads-to-corona-warn-app-not-working-properly-or-millions[/quote]
I'd quite happily rant on about the handling of the leaving cert, the lack of enforcement of covid restrictions etc in Ireland except it's not relevant to brexit or the piss-poor handling of governance by the UK government, which is having an ongoing impact on brexit.

@GaspodeWonderCat

OchonAgusOchonO However, I ask again, can you explain the relevance of the leaving cert issue to the current thread as I'm failing to see its relevance? I'm asking as I'm curious. The more you refuse to answer or try and deflect from the question, the more curious I become.

As Clav can't (or won't) satisfy your curiosity I offer my own fallible memory of the event. It was pointed out how badly Gav had done with A level results. Clav told us how badly ROI had done with exam results (relevance to discussion - nil). mathanxiety queried Clav's knowledge of ROI exams and Irish leaving cert ... and we are where we are. It is just squirrel after squirrel to attempt to divert attention from the continued failures of the Tory govt. I just walk on by, whistling tunefully, when squirrels arrive. Nuts to them I whistle ...

Thanks @GaspodeWonderCat. I remember the sequence of events. I'm just still struggling to see the relevance of the leaving cert to this discussion. I'm sure there must have been a point being made and it's probably just me not getting the bigger picture or something. It would be great to have it explained to me.

Peregrina
Not at all. A level mess - Johnson fk up - Johnson in charge of Brexit - expect another fk up - hence entirely relevant to a Brexit board.

Your same logic can be applied to my point though; BigChoc's link revealed that the same Irish government who messed up the Leaving Cert with an algorithm also failed to anticipate queues at Dover.

"Ireland faces devastating blow after its failure on ferry services to Europe."
"Some 150,000 Irish trucks transit the UK a year to Europe, carrying around €18bn in exports."
"Until recent weeks there appeared to be a naive expectation that Irish lorries would be able to skip the queues at Dover and other British ports."