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The lies of Matt Hancock

ks.234

Half way to Infinity
The list of lies from Matt Hancock is incredibly and growing.

This is just the latest

"1.6% of the transmission into care homes came through this route [from hospital discharges]" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57427777

But the 1.6% figure comes from a Public Health England report that only looked at people discharged from Hospital into Care Homes that had been tested, whereas the problem of infections and consequent deaths comes from the fact that such people we not tested.

Hancock knows that people were not being tested because that was his defence against Cummings allegation that he told the PM people were being tested .

The truth is, as testified by Care Homes and relatives of people who have died, that many more than 1.6% of people were infected by hospital dischargees.

Why is Hancock allowed to get away with such lies?

 
The time has long gone since Joe Public gives a toss. They are rewriting history in a way that normal people won't be able to keep up with it. The two cases that the Good Law Project have won so far have been completely inconsequential in the wider world. I am finding it very difficult to remain positive.
 
Personally I would like to know who on earth could cope with such a massive crisis ? No one is perfect. Dom Cummings certainly has shown severe error of judgement. Here we are with half of the UK vaccinated which is an incredible miracle really.
 
Personally I would like to know who on earth could cope with such a massive crisis ? No one is perfect. Dom Cummings certainly has shown severe error of judgement. Here we are with half of the UK vaccinated which is an incredible miracle really.

Agreed about the vaccine procurement, that much deserves credit (though the way the Tories bang on about it you’d think they’d actually developed it!).

The rest is a total mess with tens of thousands dead unnecessarily, medical staff placed at unbelievable pressure with inadequate equipment etc. The things that are absolutely unforgivable are a) the constant lying from the government, b) the total bumbling inconsistency of messaging, and c) the corruption and siphoning of countless £millions our tax money into Tory pockets without tender, non-delivery penalties etc. They deserve to be sued out of existence for that.
 
All branches of the political and media establishment spent 5 years dismantling the public sphere in order to save the Conservative Party and rat**** Corbyn, so things like accountability are gone now I’m afraid.
 
Why is any politician allowed to get away with lying? Maybe we need a national fact-checking regulator to keep them in check.
 
Personally I would like to know who on earth could cope with such a massive crisis ? No one is perfect. Dom Cummings certainly has shown severe error of judgement. Here we are with half of the UK vaccinated which is an incredible miracle really.
What governments can do is make adequate preparation in advance of pandemics. For example, it is reasonable to predict that PPE will be in great demand. Over the last 5 years there were multiple warnings from planning exercises that UK stockpiles of PPE were inadequate and would quickly run out in a pandemic. The most recent warning was in summer 2019.

The government ignored all these warnings and when the pandemic hit we rapidly ran out of PPE as predicted, a fact Hancock was lying about yesterday. This directly impacted frontline health workers, some of whom died as a result. It also contributed to the reluctance to advise the public to wear masks because that would impact supplies to health workers even more.

If a factory owner was repeatedly warned that their fire safety precautions were inadequate, that they needed more fire extinguishers perhaps, and they ignored the warnings, and then there was a fire resulting in deaths, I’d expect prosecutions to follow.

This government’s negligence has caused deaths on a huge scale and they’re getting away with it.
 
What governments can do is make adequate preparation in advance of pandemics. For example, it is reasonable to predict that PPE will be in great demand. Over the last 5 years there were multiple warnings from planning exercises that UK stockpiles of PPE were inadequate and would quickly run out in a pandemic.

It's not about wilfully ignoring advice. There are a lot of reasons Government does not stockpile a lot of stuff, most of it due to changes in accounting policy over the last 25+ years and changing appetites to risk of failure in the supply chain. Technical, not political issues.

Besides, stockpiling a load of PPE with short self-lives (an N95 is only five years) is a good way to be seen to waste taxpayers' money over the 100 or so years there isn't a pandemic of the scale of Covid-19.
 
It's not about wilfully ignoring advice. There are a lot of reasons Government does not stockpile a lot of stuff, most of it due to changes in accounting policy over the last 25+ years and changing appetites to risk of failure in the supply chain. Technical, not political issues.

Besides, stockpiling a load of PPE with short self-lives (an N95 is only five years) is a good way to be seen to waste taxpayers' money over the 100 or so years there isn't a pandemic of the scale of Covid-19.
I think the issue isn’t so much about stockpiling PPE or not, but the giving away of £billions to friends of Tories who have not supplied it
 
I think the issue isn’t so much about stockpiling PPE or not, but the giving away of £billions to friends of Tories who have not supplied it

I was responding to a post which was all about stockpiling and preparedness. :)
 
It's not about wilfully ignoring advice. There are a lot of reasons Government does not stockpile a lot of stuff, most of it due to changes in accounting policy over the last 25+ years and changing appetites to risk of failure in the supply chain. Technical, not political issues.

Besides, stockpiling a load of PPE with short self-lives (an N95 is only five years) is a good way to be seen to waste taxpayers' money over the 100 or so years there isn't a pandemic of the scale of Covid-19.
But why can’t you stockpile and then rotate the lifed stock. So the NHS draws its working supplies from the stockpile, which is replenished regularly.
 
But why can’t you stockpile and then rotate the lifed stock. So the NHS draws its working supplies from the stockpile, which is replenished regularly.

Good question but IME even the best managed stock ends up with a load being binned. I don't know the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if regular consumption would mean everything would be used in life. Also, you then get into costs of owning and running a logistics system (people, trucks, depots) to make it happen. Millions of pounds of kit on shelves might be a justifiable risk mitigation with hindsight but before the one in a hundred years Global Pandemic hit, I'm sure that the assumption was that JIT worked because availability would be guaranteed.
 
But why can’t you stockpile and then rotate the lifed stock. So the NHS draws its working supplies from the stockpile, which is replenished regularly.

You would think such a central plan and solution would be logical and provide economies of scale in day-to-day operation. You would also think that the Government would have contingency plans in place with UK based manufacturers for when the imported PPE cannot be obtained in the middle of a pandemic!
 
Agreed about the vaccine procurement, that much deserves credit (though the way the Tories bang on about it you’d think they’d actually developed it!).

The rest is a total mess . . . .

What do you think of the way they’re managing this lockdown exit?
 
Good question but IME even the best managed stock ends up with a load being binned. I don't know the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if regular consumption would mean everything would be used in life. Also, you then get into costs of owning and running a logistics system (people, trucks, depots) to make it happen. Millions of pounds of kit on shelves might be a justifiable risk mitigation with hindsight but before the one in a hundred years Global Pandemic hit, I'm sure that the assumption was that JIT worked because availability would be guaranteed.
The point is that foresight wasn't actually in short supply: a pandemic had long been thought to be a very significant risk. There were major rehearsals in the noughties and robust plans and resources were put in place. These were run down from 2010 under austerity - and I would class that as political rather than technical. There was another rehearsal in 2016 and it terrified everyone involved: it was well understood that lots of issues needed to be addressed, including PPE, but attention and resources were re-directed towards Brexit, another political choice. Then, in January, when risks were becoming clear, senior figures, including Chris Whitty, proceeded *as if* we were as prepared as we had been 10 years ago, so nobody did anything to address issues with stockpiling or JIT.

So, years of irresponsible neglect, in full cognisance of the risks, followed by reckless complacency and dishonesty when it all hit the fan. It really does seem like a lot of this was very, very avoidable, and they've been lying to our faces about it for well over a year.

So it seems, anyway: I'm going by the account in Calvert and Arbuthnot's Failures of State, which is damning. There may be another side to the story, who knows. I wouldn't trust Hancock to tell it though.
 
You would also think that the Government would have contingency plans in place with UK based manufacturers for when the imported PPE cannot be obtained in the middle of a pandemic!

I understand fully why the risk of total loss of global access to PPE was tolerated; it was unlikely to happen (this is an extraordinary and unusual one in a hundred year event) and of the mitigation(s) available (stockpile or prepare business to respond when needed) prepare was the cheaper option and allowed money to be spent or things needed now, not some possible time in the future.

The fact that UK manufacturer's couldn't step up production to meet the shortage until global availability was restored means that from this point forward, a different strategy should be deployed to deal with that risk (which we also thinkis now more likely).
 


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