UK Politics: National shortage of incompetence pads

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

23 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Oh please, you admitted that you lot can't properly read Hebrew. So I go out on a limp here and say, you just use that huge Leerstelle in between the covers and interpret into it, whatever you want. I don't know for a fact, I just know it's true that Stephen Miller (or Jared for that matter) would give me a completely different summary.

You can't claim he was an Austrian forever! 

Also,us us reform Jews cheat. We tend to read from the translated texts. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

9 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You can't claim he was an Austrian forever! 

Also,us us reform Jews cheat. We tend to read from the translated texts. 

He was. Ah, you meant him, for a moment I thought you meant the Governator, Arnie himself. But really, there are so many great German anti-semites to pick from. Martin Luther for instance. Or you can pick the almost any other Nazi, and they are all Germans. Heydrich, Himmler, lame Joseph Goebbels, fat Herman Göhring. All of them are unquestionable German. Well, Himmler and Göhring are Bavarians, which is just kinda Germanish, but officially part of Germany. Don't be so fixated on Mozart.

 

Uff, part of me wants to run with that. The smarter part knows, no matter how hard I try, I won't come up with a punchline that makes that gonna end well.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

He was. Ah, you meant him, for a moment I thought you meant the Governator, Arnie himself. But really, there are so many great German anti-semites to pick from. Martin Luther for instance. Or you can pick the almost any other Nazi, and they are all Germans. Heydrich, Himmler, lame Joseph Goebbels, fat Herman Göhring. All of them are unquestionable German. Well, Himmler and Göhring are Bavarians, which is just kinda Germanish, but officially part of Germany. Don't be so fixated on Mozart.

 

Uff, part of me wants to run with that. The smarter part knows, no matter how hard I try, I won't come up with a punchline that makes that gonna end well.

Don't be so self loathing.

The Mozart line was pretty funny.

[Werthead]

Unsurprisingly, the track and trace system isn't working properly. About a quarter of the people who've been in contacted with infectees have actually been contacted (so three-quarters are oblivious and still wandering around, in danger of passing the virus on if they have contracted it) and there are now numerous reports of people working for the track and trace system who've not actually been doing anything, just sitting on a computer system with no information on what they're supposed to be doing. A woman interviewed this morning on the BBC confirmed she'd managed to get through two and a half seasons of The Good Place whilst waiting to make a single outgoing call, which is impressive stuff.

I think we all expect teething problems with these kind of services, but this is the sort of thing that should have been tested and put in place before they started easing restrictions, not days afterwards.

In other news, the Tory candidate for London Mayor seems to be under the impression that Londoners are morons.

[Which Tyler]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Unsurprisingly, the track and trace system isn't working properly. About a quarter of the people who've been in contacted with infectees have actually been contacted (so three-quarters are oblivious and still wandering around, in danger of passing the virus on if they have contracted it) and there are now numerous reports of people working for the track and trace system who've not actually been doing anything, just sitting on a computer system with no information on what they're supposed to be doing. A woman interviewed this morning on the BBC confirmed she'd managed to get through two and a half seasons of The Good Place whilst waiting to make a single outgoing call, which is impressive stuff.

I think we all expect teething problems with these kind of services, but this is the sort of thing that should have been tested and put in place before they started easing restrictions, not days afterwards.

In other news, the Tory candidate for London Mayor seems to be under the impression that Londoners are morons.

Dad is a retired GP, who re-enlisted with GMC and volunteered to help out - was offered a contact tracing job; and with his background - to be top tier.

He's been stuck at the confirmation of application stage for 3 weeks now - because GMC renewed his licence "until further notice"; whilst the track and trace system requires an actual date that his licence runs to.

3 weeks; with him chasing up every other day - neither system is capable of adapting to the other. He even tried just putting a date of 31/12/20 - which failed as they then checked in with GMC which flagged up the inconsistency.

 

Until then, he can't even start his T&T training.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Unsurprisingly, the track and trace system isn't working properly. About a quarter of the people who've been in contacted with infectees have actually been contacted (so three-quarters are oblivious and still wandering around, in danger of passing the virus on if they have contracted it) and there are now numerous reports of people working for the track and trace system who've not actually been doing anything, just sitting on a computer system with no information on what they're supposed to be doing. A woman interviewed this morning on the BBC confirmed she'd managed to get through two and a half seasons of The Good Place whilst waiting to make a single outgoing call, which is impressive stuff.

I think we all expect teething problems with these kind of services, but this is the sort of thing that should have been tested and put in place before they started easing restrictions, not days afterwards.

I thought I read something like that over at The Guardian.

So yeah, the track and trace seems to be going well, well, as well as expected from that administration that is.

[dog-days]

Additional fun feature of Track and Trace is that it could be exploited by telephone scammers. 

[williamjm]

The government's insistence on bringing MPs back together seems to be going well...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/business-secretary-alok-sharma-coronavirus-test-speech-commons

The cabinet do seem to be leading the way with trying to achieve herd immunity.

Sensibly they have now relented on their original plans and allowed proxy votes for MPs having to shield, the House of Commons is smaller than it appears on TV and seems poorly set up for social distancing.

[Fez]

So I'm curious if how well this is going to play with Conservative supporters?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/boris-johnson-says-3m-people-hong-kong-will-get-path-british/

Quote

 

Mr Johnson said the national security law would breach the treaty between China and the UK and would "dramatically erode" Hong Kong's autonomy.

If China chooses to go ahead with its changes for the island, the PM said he would effectively upgrade the status of British National (Overseas) passports, which 350,000 people in Hong Kong hold and 2.5 million are eligible to apply for, to grant immigration rights beyond the current six month limit.

He said: "If China imposes its national security law, the British Government will change our immigration rules and allow any holder of these passports from Hong Kong to come to the UK for a renewable period of 12 months and be given further immigration rights, including the right to work, which could place them on a route to citizenship.

"This would amount to one of the biggest changes in our visa system in British history."

 

Doesn't inviting up to 2.5 million non-English people to come be British citizens rather clash with a lot of what the pro-Brexit people like about Brexit?

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

So I'm curious if how well this is going to play with Conservative supporters?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/boris-johnson-says-3m-people-hong-kong-will-get-path-british/

Doesn't inviting up to 2.5 million non-English people to come be British citizens rather clash with a lot of what the pro-Brexit people like about Brexit?

It's a stunt designed to show support, but Johnson knows that China would never permit a mass exodus of 3 million people to Britain in a thousand years. It's a sop that sounds good.

[SpaceChampion]

That's kind of fun to imagine in an alt-history sort of way.  BBC should make that series.  It'd be like Alien Nation, without the metaphor of aliens, just the culture clash.

[Derfel Cadarn]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/mps-renew-calls-for-virtual-parliament-to-return-as-alok-sharma-is-tested-for-coronavirus/ar-BB14ZOX7?ocid=spartandhp

No sooner are MPs forced back to parliament than one member takes ill.  Rees-Mogg's responsible, and all so Johnson has a mob of braying donkeys behind him to cheer whatever nonsense he comes out with.

[Maltaran]

They managed to get a nice distraction with Madeleine McCann coming back onto the front pages.

[williamjm]

7 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

No sooner are MPs forced back to parliament than one member takes ill.  Rees-Mogg's responsible, and all so Johnson has a mob of braying donkeys behind him to cheer whatever nonsense he comes out with.

Alok Sharma has apparently now tested negative, but it might have scared some MPs enough that they'll continue looking into alternative arrangements.

I remember maybe a couple of years ago there was discussion about potentially having to close the Houses of Parliament down for an extended period for much-needed repair and modernisation work, sending the MPs into a temporary alternative. Maybe this crisis would be a good time to revisit that idea and choose an alternative better suited for social distancing?

[mormont]

The Commons hasn't been fit for purpose for decades now. From what I hear, it's actually dangerous in places. The chamber can't hold all the MPs, the voting system is anachronistic and farcical, and a serious fire is a real risk and would almost certainly result in casualties. But the party whips like the voting system because it's easy to keep an eye on rebels, and privileged idiots like Rees-Mogg who fetishise the past and don't care about accessibility or modernisation are in charge. Don't expect any huge revamp soon, in other words.

[Werthead]

This will shock everyone to their very core, but it turns out Johnson's waffle about the NI-Scotland bridge was bullshit and nothing's been done about the idea since he voiced it as a PR stunt.

On 6/4/2020 at 9:58 PM, mormont said:

The Commons hasn't been fit for purpose for decades now. From what I hear, it's actually dangerous in places. The chamber can't hold all the MPs, the voting system is anachronistic and farcical, and a serious fire is a real risk and would almost certainly result in casualties. But the party whips like the voting system because it's easy to keep an eye on rebels, and privileged idiots like Rees-Mogg who fetishise the past and don't care about accessibility or modernisation are in charge. Don't expect any huge revamp soon, in other words.

There are something like 4-8 fires a year in the building, but they're contained and extinguished early on. Parts of the building are an absolute death trap. It needs all of its plumbing reworked, it needs all of its electrics completely redone (they haven't been fit for purpose for a decade or more) and vast chunks of the roof and exterior need major maintenance.

They haven't been able to agree to repair it though, as they thought spending the couple of billion and five years it would take to repair everything would be bad optics for the public in a time of austerity, and of course that's now going to be a lot worse. I think there's also an unofficial reason that moving everyone to another, more modern building with better amenities might make it very hard to convince them to go back again.

[polishgenius]

Moving everyone into a new parliament building permanently, fixing the old one and turning it into a museum/historical monument feels like it would be by far the most sensible way to go and will therefore never happen.

[DaveSumm]

It is pretty ridiculous that it’s sole purpose is to seat MP’s in the same room and it doesn’t fit all our MP’s. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Moving everyone into a new parliament building permanently, fixing the old one and turning it into a museum/historical monument feels like it would be by far the most sensible way to go and will therefore never happen.

This would be my preference. Make the new parliament building in the middle of the country, with bespoke housing apartments for the MP’s.

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

It is pretty ridiculous that it’s sole purpose is to seat MP’s in the same room and it doesn’t fit all our MP’s. 

It was a deliberate choice by Churchill when it was rebuilt after the war, because he knew that most of the time you don't get all of the MPs in the chamber and he didn't want it to always look empty.