No wonder this government is already in such a mess. Not only does Rachel Reeves not understand economics, but it is also now clear that she and Keir Starmer clearly do not understand that without good financial controls and having people in charge who really understand the importance of accounting and everything that goes with it, they have no chance of delivering what they want for the people of the UK.
Accounting, accountability, control of financial systems and the good management that flows from those things might be too mundane for Starmer and Reeves to worry their empty heads about, but they ignore them at their peril.
I take that as a bid to be made Cabinet Secretary. Hear the pension’s pretty good there….
Murphy Schmurphy.
The interesting question is whether that twat Peston will realise that the main point isn’t whether or not the cunt who oversaw those ridiculous contracts has been promoted, but the fact that the contracts existed at all. I say he won’t.
Quite so, Interested.
Which party was most enthusiastic about lockdown and shouted loudest about the “shortage” of PPE, I wonder.
As vermine is off the table, the Spud is on manoeuvres for a position as a Spad.
If he’s this bad before retirement what’s he going to be like when he’s got more time on his hands.
Vermin may be off the table, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he’s haggling for a Professor Emeritus appointment.
“Not only does Rachel Reeves not understand economics ….”
That’s gotta hurt coming from him. Though it could be true.
PPE: here’s a question I’ve not seen anyone ask. Does PPE work?
I know that surgical masks don’t work. Do more complicated masks work under hospital conditions?
I’ll bet my bottom dollar that perspex face protectors don’t work (at least at any level beyond impeding much of a nurse’s sneeze from reaching a patient).
Do any other parts of the PPE dressing up box work or is the whole thing mere performative medical theatre?
Why have I never seen this basic question asked?
@BiND: “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he’s haggling for a Professor Emeritus appointment”
I thought Emeriti didn’t get paid, it’s just a way to hang onto the Prof title for those who enjoy that sort of thing?
@dearieme
A friend of mine who’s an orthopaedic surgeon said right at the start that it was all useless against viruses, especially highly contagious ones.
He said pressurised hazmat suits with proper respirators would work, nothing else really does over time.
(Surgeons wear the masks they wear to protect the patients, as they lean over their open wounds, not to protect themselves.)
From that we extrapolated that the whole thing was really about theatre (not the operating kind): we need to convince people there’s a terrifying virus about, so we need to get them to wear a visible symbol.
This was one of the things that woke me up to what was going on (or at least, to the fact that what they were telling us was bollocks).
The blue ones that most people wore actually came in a box upon which was stamped the words Does not protect against viruses.
@BiND, @AtC. Prof Emeritus don’t get paid but, if you don’t get one, then you shouldn’t continue to use the Prof title (Dr. from a PhD is a qualification and so life-long, Prof is a job description). The main advantage, though, is that it continues to give you e-access to academic journals and other university IT systems (an email account, for example). So you have the resources to continue to write academically into your retirement, particularly if you are not in a lab-based subject. As many academics struggle to separate their professional identity from their individual identity, that matters (to them) more than you might think, even if their research gets less and less cutting edge by the year and their lifetime-of-knowledge book sells no copies. As someone said to me recently, “Yeah, but nobody actually listens to you any more from the day you become Emeritus”.
‘Does PPE work?’
I used to work in a hospital aseptic unit. We had a very specific gowning procedure designed to keep bacterial contamination out. The masks we wore were irradiated, individually wrapped and single-use (max 4 hours wear). As Interested said it was all to stop us from breathing out bacteria and contaminating the products, nothing to do with personal safety
AtC,
“ I thought Emeriti didn’t get paid, it’s just a way to hang onto the Prof title for those who enjoy that sort of thing?”
& HoblinMango,
I was thinking of it as a status symbol for an extremely status conscious potato. The strong rumour at the time of his academic (I use the term loosely) was that he’d only take the positions if they came with a “Professor of”title.
At the height of Covid, every major media outlet was screaming “We’re all going to die – won’t government save us!!!” Hancock is a useless toad (even by the standards of politicians), but if he’d said “We’re going to buy lots of PPE, but it will have to go through all the proper CS procedures: three independent quotes; due diligence; statements on the treatment of LGBQWERTY staff; anti-slavery; etc – which will take a few months at least” he’d have been eviscerated. Unsurprisingly, lots of thieves and rogues were attracted by the smell of free taxpayers’ money.
dearieme – the perspex face shields are generally sod all use against viruses, but if you’re working in an environment where you may get “splattered” (anything with pressurized body fluids) then you’ll likely thank your lucky stars. See e.g. the experiences of Dr Sandra Lee aka Dr Pimple Popper.
Remember this:
The UK health secretary has criticised people who have chosen not to be vaccinated against coronavirus as they “take up hospital beds” that could be used for patients in need.
Sajid Javid said the unvaccinated – about 5 million people or 10% of the eligible population – were having a damaging impact on society and creating extra pressure on the health system.
“They must really think about the damage they are doing to society,” Javid told Sky News on Sunday. “They take up hospital beds that could have been used for someone with maybe a heart problem, or maybe someone who is waiting for elective surgery.”
“But instead of protecting themselves and protecting the community they choose not to get vaccinated,” he added.
I’m sure the unvaccinated will start dropping like flies any day now.
Was it really only 5 million of us who didn’t get the jabs?
I feel like we deserve a t shirt, or something.
There was a BBC2 programme in August 2022 trying to persuade those who had not bothered with the jab to change their mind. The description of the broadcast is interesting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0019g27
The main blurb asks the question: “… why are around four million adults in the UK still yet to receive a single dose of the vaccine?”
But the small print tells a different story: “The programme also features the largest UK-wide survey on attitudes to the vaccine since its rollout, conducted by ICM. From a sample size of over 2,500 adults from across the UK, 1,894 were vaccinated and 664 were unvaccinated.”
So, that survey found that 26.56% of adults were unvaccinated – equating to 12 million over-18s.
I can think of two explanations for the discrepancy: one is that the UK adult population is way higher than officially stated, and that most of that excess will be living under the radar, not registered with the NHS and by definition unvaccinated and uncounted; the other is that the number of unvaccinated was deliberately under-reported, because our rulers assumed that we would feel uncomfortable with our choice if we thought that so few were of the rest of the population were on our wavelength.
“Was it really only 5 million of us who didn’t get the jabs?
I feel like we deserve a t shirt, or something.”
The unvaccinated will inherit the earth……..and it is probably way more than 5m who didn’t get the jabs, because there’s a lot more people in the country than the PTB are letting on.
My first born is a handsome lad, and probably above average intelligence. He refused the vaccine so I suggested he became a sperm donor.
He’s fcuked off back to France leaving a grumpy selfish gene behind.
Hold on, masks were to stop you breathing in other people’s viruses? I thought the whole point that had been rammed down our throats was to wear them to stop *us* breathing out *our* infections, a la surgical staff. “I’m old and vunnerable, how *DARE* I have my life restricted by you bastards breathing everywhere, the *entire* population must mask up dammit so that I can go about my normal business, rather than just me protecting myself against the world!”
From the Royal College of Surgeons website:
Neil Orr.
“In 1969 he was appointed as a consultant surgeon to Colchester Hospital. Neil quickly made his mark in his new appointment. He questioned accepted dogma, but always politely and with great charm, which led to him getting results. He was a keen exponent of day case surgery, which in the early 1970s was far from common practice. He persevered however, and the new hospital was built with a day unit thanks to his endeavours. He challenged the use of surgical masks in the operating theatre and published a controversial paper in the Annals, showing that over a six-month period when all operations in one theatre were performed without the surgeon wearing a mask there was no increase in infection (‘Is a mask necessary in the operating theatre?’ Ann R Coll Surg Eng. 1981 Nov;63[6]:390-2). This led to considerable debate and controversy, but time has shown that masks are not essential for most procedures.
Having had such procedures several times, I’d say that medics wearing mask are in normal circumstances not required for nasal/throat polyp removal; ingrowing toenail rectification; and for routine dental work. I was amazed when my dentist started wearing a visor mask.
The covid times were an instructive period for me – a a child I often wondered how a society can fall foul of of a mania (such as the South Sea Bubble, Tulip mania, the Salem Witch Trials etc). Now I know. And I also know how many of the population would go along with the concentration camps, and a significant minority would volunteer to herd the prisoners in and finish them off.
I dislike people much more now.
Jim – I was amazed at how easily the majority of people were frightened into parroting nonsensical messages they’d seen on TV.
I thought more people were “fuck you” people, like us.
And I think Paul, Somerset is correct, there are more of us than the government and media want us to believe. But the average person is a herd animal. That’s probably as it should be, but when their shepherds are evil men it gives us a problem.
philip – I’m sure he’s busy doing sex to French women.
When a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate.