UK Test and Trace chief Dido Harding tries to convince MPs that £14m for canned mobile app was money well spent Baroness Harding, head of the UK's NHS Test and Trace programme, has defended the money spent on the app it scrapped in June last year, saying £14m was not wasted. One plank of the response to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, Test and Trace, built its own app based on a centralised database of contacts, an approach that attracted …
What is puzzling is all the different numbers that keep appearing:
£14 Million
£10 Billion
£22 Billion
Which is it and what is apportioned to the various stages of the fiasco. The sums involved, even at the low end are simply mind boggling. It appears inconceivable that you could spend that much and yet deliver so little.
I'd like to know how much was spent on test and how much on trace. Does anyone know if that breakdown exists?
The testing part is in itself is a huge effort involving a lot of logistics, people and some specialist facilities. Maybe we could have started a bit earlier but apart from the odd teething problems early on it seems to be going well now. I think Dido Harding was only involved in the trace part which is the bit under criticism and rightly so.
I do not recall the original Dido's location in Dante's Comedia, but I did notice that of all the circles in Hell, not one is reserved for Lords who betray their subjects.
Reading it I found that I went though these stages:
1: Oh shit! I've done that (I'm gay, so a trip to the burning sands is in my itinerary*)
a Little further down and it is
2: Well, I've never done that (murder, blackmail etc.)
Deeper still and we get to
3: I will never even have the opportunity to do that (betray my city to the enemy at the gates, who then slaughter the men enslave the children and rape the women).
You can go to a circle of Hell for betraying God, stealing from someone, committing murder, blasphemy etc., but your subjects are yours to do with as you wish, according to Dante, who might just have not wanted to be sentenced to death for sedition or rebellion had he suggested that lords owed their subjects some respect and even legal rights.
*Then of course, the last circle in Purgatory is of fire for those who exhibit 'misplaced love' (i.e. me again, so I might just be ok, if I'm a good boy ...)
"I'm gay, so a trip to the burning sands [...]"
It is interesting that Dante wrote that in Florence. Yet about 100 years later in the same city Savonarola was campaigning against the existing sexual mores there - as well as other "vanities". Through modern filters being "gay" was apparently considered pretty normal in those times.
Savanorola came to sticky end after his populist religious drive started to become an unreasonable cult with dangerous ambitions.
"Harding confirmed that the average spending per consultant was £1,100 per day."
I'm an IT developer specialising in HTML-based information processing systems. I've got nearly 2 decades of experience in the field. Sounds like I shouldn't have a problem landing a fee like that. If I throw in data storage experience, it should be a guarantee!
/s
Given Ms Harding's technical knowledge, I'm sure she'd never realise that I was just talking about a "hello world" website that I built back in school. The index page file is stored on a hard drive somewhere, I'm sure.
Average = mode
I suspect this consists of a select bunch of "consultants" who were paid 10x that due to sharing a surname with people in government, and another bunch of people paid half that actually doing the work, and a much larger bunch of people paid bugger-all while manning call-centers to clean up the mess and to bring the average down.
£1100 per day! For fuck's sake! I did IT support for the NHS until I retired and I was only ever paid Agenda for Change rates! (look it up, you're all IT literate) And they tried to drop me down a grade until I threatened to retire anyway!
£1100 a day!!
icon: I decided I was sad, rather than incandescent with rage. Ghod those beta-blockers are good.
"[...] not the rate the conslutants were paid directly.
In the late 1980s a big commercial customer was willing to pay £1500 a day to my IT employer for my technical services. Apparently not an unusual consultancy fee at that time for the right skills. They were canny enough to specify me by name - not allowing any substitutes. Not that I saw much of that fee - but as a techie it was the technical opportunities that kept me there.
Don't call it NHS Test and Trace - as the main Test and Trace is nothing to do with the NHS as there is no logic or science behind their approach - Test and Trace only works when the prevalence of the disease in the community is very low e.g. Australia / NZ/ Taiwan etc
However, the App was 'organised' by NHSX, a bigger shower of muppets I am yet to meet.
A surprising number of the people involved in the app failure were the same people around 10+ years ago up to their seedy necks in the Connecting for Health (£15-20bn wasted) and care.data (put back NHS IT by 10 years) debacles.
There are some really good, dedicated and hard-working people in NHS IT, but unfortunately they are not the ones making the decisions. Take the current rush by NHSX to throw money at anything labelled AI. No successes, just a bunch of older Nathan Barleys spouting buzzwords like a roman candle.
> "Harding confirmed that the average spending per consultant was £1,100 per day."
In fairness, it means that $BIG_CONSULTING_FIRM rented out their consultants at that rate, not that the consultants themselves had the full amount passed on to them. I wouldn't be surprised if $BIG_CONSULTING_FIRM trousered 70% of the money, which is then parcelled out as dividends to $BIG_TORY_DONOR_BOARD_MEMBER
Citation needed [Gratuitous promo for XKCD merch]. I have not been able to find any.
I guess they are crowing about the addition of the QR code combined with contact tracing as a "world first". Every time I hear that phrase from this government I get the distinct uneasy feeling soft soaped into swallowing yet another half or three quarter lie.
"Taiwan had a contact tracing system in place before the COVID pandemic after their experience with SARS."
We have a contact tracing system here - it's run by the NHS and is used to trace contacts of people with infectious diseases, usually tropical ones. The omnishambolic one having cash hurled at it is under the auspices of SERCO.
Beat me to it. The truly baffling thing through all this nonsense is that every single system needed was already a standard part of the NHS. Communicable diseases are not a new thing. It's not even usually tropical diseases, most of the contact tracing done in normal times is for things like menigitis outbreaks at the start of university terms. Sure, it would need to be scaled up a bit when facing a pandemic, but that would have been much, much easier and cheaper than inventing an entire new privately run system with no connection to the NHS.
On the same broadcast Dido's accentuating of the positive (80% of contagious staying home) reasoning
was proficiently and politely demolished by Ex Health Secretary Hunt who got her to admit that there are
at least 20000 or so people known to have Covid not staying home. Then he asked Why?
Dido didn't know
if it was for economic reasons or not!
(Paris for the deaf ear)
Did she have hand in the NHS vaccination booking web site too?
It has a neat Catch 22. You get the letter to go to the web page or ring 119. Then you can only book an appointment for your first one - IF you can also secure a date for your second one some 12 weeks hence. No escape route - book both or you get none.
Stevenage Super Centre has the whole of this week with vacant slots for first jabs - but is not offering any dates for the future. The result is that you can't confirm the booking for your first one. The 119 phone line says they use the same web page - and they have the same Catch 22 situation.
Seems like someone hasn't adjusted to the change from a 3 week gap to a 12 week gap.
I'll now have to sit tight and wait for the call from my GP.
Not when I booked my jab two weeks ago. Got text with link. Click on that, confirm your birth date and then choose your appointment. All done in 4 clicks/1 minute. If only all online bookings were that simple.
The jab, at my GP surgery, was even slicker than the flu jab. Walk straight in, confirm birth date, "have you got Covid-19", jab and a 15 min pause on the way out. Brilliant with lots of volunteer marshalls.
I put it down to being NHS organised which has been the one shining star of this pandemic. Whereas T&T stumbles from disaster to catastrophe. The unpreparedness for the surge testing in mind boggling. Unbriefed testers, barcodes not working and a two day delay.
Maybe we could swap Dido for her South Korean counterpart? Just compare the numbers. Kim Jong-un would find her a more effective killing machine than his crack army unit.
Judging by friends - it seems like the difference is whether you get a letter from the NHS - or direct contact from your GP.
Another friend went online after her NHS letter today - and booked her first without having the Catch 22. She was told she would receive a contact with a date for the second one later. So it appears the response may depend on which centre is doing your first jab - unless the system has changed in the last couple of hours.
Edit: Nope still same Catch 22 brick wall
I'm not sure if this applies to my parents in Warwickshire (93 and 88 years old). My father has had his first jab, and the same centre has said they can give my mother her jab while she sits in the car as she has great difficulty walking. Admittedly my father does have a date for his second jab, but they seem quite pleased with how it is being managed.
I'm beginning to think I will have to game the NHS online system. Book my first jab at the nearby Super Centre this week - and select one of the offered inaccessible alternative locations for the second. Then after having the first jab - cancel the second and see what is sensibly available in 12 weeks' time.
Don't like wasting resources like that - but 119 assure me that my failed attempts so far will not have created any bookings.
Yes, my partner and me both got texts from our GP and got done at the hub. But on the same day I got another text from a London Teaching Hospital inviting me to have it there. Then, yesterday my partner also got a text from the same London Teaching Hospital inviting her - although she had been jabbed two weeks before.
It would seem the vaccination minister on the radio this morning that claimed they had a central system that knew everybody who had been vaccinated at whatever location is not being used by the vaccinators. Or there is a screw up. Or the period between jabs has been quietly reduced back to 21 days. You choose.
I have just received one of those letters. It is as useful as a chocolate fireguard.
I filled in all the fields and went to see where I could get the jab. It gave me quite a few to choose from. There was only one problem. I live on the Isle of Wight and all the vaccination centres were on the mainland. So if I wanted to go to Bournemouth or Southampton it would not have been a problem but I didn't think that taking the ferry across and then using public transport, if available, was a very good idea.
Sure the distances don't look too bad, 15 or 22 miles etc but somehow they seem to have missed that there is a bloody great ditch in the way. It happens all the time with government sites. It would be nice if someone told them that we can't just walk across.
So now I will have to wait until the GP surgery I have been transferred to realise I am on their books and make an appointment that way.
"they seem to have missed that there is a bloody great ditch in the way. It happens all the time with government sites. It would be nice if someone told them that we can't just walk across."
It's not just Goverment site that have that issue. I live on the backs of a large river, the nearest crossing points being 5 miles up river or 3 miles down river. Almost any service that offers to find me the "nearest location/branch" will invariably highlight the ones in the town directly over the river from me rather then the ones that are actually within a few miles of physically possible travel. Maybe if I had an Amphicar...
Even more pronounced if you look at distances between Cornwall/Devon and Wales.Seems to think Barnstaple is nice and close... Actually takes about the same time as London or Manchester.
Lovely though Barnstaple might be, it is hardly a sensible option if Bristol or Birmingham has what is needed.
Yeah, definitely not just Govt. sites that have this issue. I wanted (correction, swmbo wanted) some stuff from Ikea. Give it my postcode, and it will not let me choose the nearest store, which is Gateshead, because Belfast is closer to me. Apart from the two and a half hour drive to Stranraer to catch a ferry, then the two and a half hour ferry crossing...
It's also not unknown to be told the nearest place is Dumfries (yes, if you can swim across the Solway) or the Isle of Man (again, you need to swim across the Irish Sea). Always used to catch the Romanian call centre out when they were looking for the closest engineer to a site. I've even had to have international roaming switched off as I keep ending up on Manx Telecom!
"I'll now have to sit tight and wait for the call from my GP."
Best way, my GP surgery in South Devon have been efficient keeping patients informed as to vaccination groups and sessions. The actual vaccination was well organised and friendly and included a vaccination 'passport' as well as an appointment for second jab. From here nothing but praise for a well organised process and a model of good communication.
I didn't notice this - just booked the two. But...
SWMBO g ot a call from the GP on Tuesday a couple of weeks ago to go to their centre in the local cottage hospital behind their surgery. Just after the call was hung up there was a second one from them which dropped straight through to on-hold and eventually picked up by a receptionist who didn't know the call originated with them or what for - "If it's important they'll call back." Was it a fumbled call for my appointment or an artefact of their ACD - who knows?
Next day I got my letter & went online. The closest centre was in the middle of a town where I wasn't sure about the parking & didn't fancy the two bus journeys each way to go by public transport. I booked tor the centre at Manchester City football ground instead on the basis that it should be straightforward to find somewhere with more than adequate car parking. It turned out that the car park for this wasn't the obvious one on the map or that the SatNav database knew about. In fact I couldn't find a list of centres and coordinates online at all. That would be a very obvious benefit given that people are going to have to go to centres in unfamiliar locations.
The organisation at the Manchester centre was impressive. Kudos to whoever put all that together on that scale. The local centre - a pity it coincided with the surgery having builders in, blocking one car park and entrance so they couldn't work a one-way traffic flow but SWMBO says the organisation of the vaccination centre was fine.
But they day after I got my vaccination I got a text from the GP inviting me to make an appointment there. When I rung them they said they could see my vaccination record so would cancel. Then I got a second text telling me the appointment that I hadn't actually made woas cancelled and to get in touch for another.
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" It turned out that the car park for this wasn't the obvious one on the map or that the SatNav database knew about."
As the originator of this thread - here is an update.
Finally today Stevenage Super Centre were offering 2nd vaccination dates. The list started with the minimum 12 week gap time. Did my various posts prompt someone to sort out their date data? The confirmation email has still not arrived - but I have my post-it with the necessary reference numbers.
As it was an unknown building I did a trial run today - or rather a walk. There were no signs for people going on foot - until you were at the door of the NHS reception area. Not the building that Google Streetview had clearly marked - so the few minutes wasted justified a trial run. Queuing seemed to be achieved by regulating cars entering the campus car park. Only one person was standing in the pouring rain queueing outside reception - presumably another pedestrian.
The walk also reminded me that in a year's lockdown - the kitchen exercise bike needs to be complemented with more sessions on the garage treadmill.
then rejects you because you are on anticoagulants.
That reminds me of trying to replenish my daily dispersible 75mg aspirin tablets. I buy them myself rather than get the NHS to pay for such a usually cheap item.
In lockdown I decided to buy them online. I kept getting asked the question "Do you have an existing medical condition?". The obvious answer "yes" led to an immediate rejection.
The 75mg dose is not used as an analgesic - but as a blood thinner for people with possible circulation problems. You usually only use it if your doctor has recommended it. NICE probably has it on the list of things they prefer people to buy themselves rather than as a formal NHS prescription.
Service seems to be rather too random:
**** I got my first shot last Saturday in the basement of the town's Leisure Centre.
All went very well. When I arrived on time for my appointment there was no queue outside the door, just a 5 minute wait inside in well-spaced seats, got the shot followed by a 30 minute wait in another comfortable chair in case I had a reaction (I didn't). All over in the advertised time.
In summary, a very well-organised process.
**** Today a friend went for her first shot in a West London suburb. She walked to the appointed place in pissing rain, arrived on time but all she found was a locked door and a wet-looking guy stationed outside to tell people that 'all appointments were cancelled'. No explanation offered. No attempt made to e-mail, text or ring her beforehand about the cancellation.
In summary: WTF.
"Because of the work that we did with it, we were able to develop – together with Google and Apple – a much more effective algorithm, and Google and Apple have both recognised that."
Never admit defeat, never admit fault, attach yourself to the winners, pat yourself on the ass for doing so...
Stop icon for Stop employing her, please!
She was educated alongside David Cameron at Oxford and then rather more formally attached herself to a Tory Cabinet Minister. And, having a PPE degree, obviously knew everything one needs to know about infection control. Natural choice ... and natural result.
Oh and pretty sharp of her to help create the market for her services by running that experiment to establish an uncontrolled R factor at the Cheltenham Horse Racing Festival to help kick off the first UK wave last March. She really knows better than the public health people pleading that her Jockey Club stop it.
I remember reading an article by the BBC's Rory Celery Jones (keep reading) where he was asked to be a consultant for the NHS app. In fairness to him, he said he turned it down. Even he knew if it needed technical expertise, he should be at the back of the queue rather than the front.
I can't help but think, most of the other consultants would be just as unsuitable.
Anyone who though an app could possibly work would be just as unsuitable. Short of mandating it on every phone it was obvious from the start that it would never have enough takers. Who's going to download and run an app which might order them to stay isolated at home, with no way to object or to find out if it was a false alarm?
Every country that made such apps available has quietly dropped the whole idea.
>Who's going to download and run an app which might order them to stay isolated at home
Somebody living in a country where they knew the govt would deliver food while you were home, your employer would keep paying you and you knew every other person was doing the same and so the economy would return in a month ?
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Indeed - God knows, a proper lock down - a month of everyone staying home and we could be Australia, if not New Zealand. The bonus being, with ta curfew enforced by a shoot on sight policy, we could have increased national IQ by an order of magnitude or so by culling the deniers, anti-vaccers and conspiracy loons.
"Sequel" is mostly used by people who have used Oracle a lot. Ess-Queue-Ell by users of other databases. I think "Sequel" tends to creep in where it makes compound forms like SQL-plus and PL/SQL less of a mouthful. Hence "My-Sequel".
There's actually some justification for "Sequel", as the original name was Structured English Query Language - SEQL.
“ Somebody living in a country where they knew the govt would deliver food while you were home, your employer would keep paying you and you knew every other person was doing the same and so the economy would return in a month”
And who is going to deliver food if everyone stays at home? And why do you think it would be possible for the economy to return in a month?
Once the virus is spread in the country, there is no lockdown that can eliminate it in a month.
That would be consistent with the 'it's not what you know but who you know that matters approach by so many PHBs when they need to get things done, but cannot be bothered to think about who would actually be the best people to do it. In BoJo's position, needing an effective test and trace programme, I would have just phoned up Sir Paul Nurse (microbiologist, Nobel laureate for medicine, former president of the Royal Society) and asked his advice, or just told him to get on with it and let me know what he needs next week.
In this country we have an abundance of superb scientists, engineers, IT specialists, and frankly I find the Test and Trace farce embarrassing, were it not so important it would be a joke.
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Technology Experts - let's get a Guy in...
Guy Kewney/Guy Goma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Goma
https://metro.co.uk/2016/05/09/its-10-years-since-a-man-was-interviewed-on-bbc-by-mistake-5871153/
I suspect Guy Goma would have provided good value and sterling service were he employed on T&T
For the record, Ms Harding is either misinformed or lying. Google and Apple had their decentralised Track & Trace apis published before the NHS even had their first app on GitHub.
As for adding the QR code feature... wow scan a barcode & update a database! That must have taken 1 day max to implement.
Maybe she's just in the alternative reality (parallel universe?) of which Trump was President, where whatever one utters must by definition be the truth..
If you aren't aware you're spouting nonsense, can you legitimately be accused of lying?
As for adding the QR code feature... wow scan a barcode & update a database! That must have taken 1 day max to implement.
Day 1. Constitute committee to decide we need venue check-in functionality.
Day 8. Committee meet via Zoom - but Dido was connecting on Talk Talk, and no-one could hear a word.
Day 9. Committee meets again - decides to appoint WhiffWhaff PLC to design this part of the app.
Day 10. MD of WhiffWhaff PLC phones his mate Boffo, who says his nephew is a whizz at this sort of thing.
Day40. Committee contacts WhiffWhaff for an update on progress.
Day 41. Boffo's nephew presents his world beating scheme - which basically involves getting each venue to have a stamp, and each time you visit the place you stamp a card you carry with you. Turns out that when Boffo said his nephew works in IT he meant 'worked on the till handing out Costa Coffee loyalty cards'
Day 42. WhiffWhaff cash the check and move onto their next venture, designing vaccines for France.
Day 43. Emergency contract given to Crapita.
Day 44. Crapita present a design for a new QR code, conveniently incompatible with any and all phones and printers. Committee congratulate Crapita and pay their 5000 man hour invoice.
Day 45-90. New QR code embedded in app.
Day 91. Someone realises it doesn't work.
Day 82. PFY slaps together a working app in-between bouts of Among Us.
Day 83. Committee meets, votes bonuses all round and engages another PR company to craft press release about world beating venue check in code.
So more than a day. The budget breakdown for this bit was recently leaked as well.
1. Committee expenses 1 million (travel, having gourmet food delivered, coke, pole dancing)
2. WhiffWhaff PLC - 3 million (of which 0.5 million was donated to Trump re-election campaign)
3. Crapita design - 0.5 million (a bargain really)
4. Software integration - 2 million.
5. PFY - Crate of Redbull and 20 litres Vodka, (Plus Nando delivery for 1)
6. Bonuses - 1 million
7. PR company - 2 million.
Well, there's this.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/exposurenotification
"iOS 13.7 introduces a new method of calculating the user’s Exposure Risk Value, described in ENExposureConfiguration. Apps can implement this new method, or continue to use the calculation method introduced in earlier versions of iOS. To choose your app’s approach, add an entry to your app’s Info.plist file with a key of ENAPIVersion. To use the new approach, specify a value of 2. To use the original approach, specify a value of 1."
iOS 13.7 was released in September 2020 (current version is 14.4), and, as described, the way that an "Exposure Risk Value" was calculated was (optionally) altered. So that may be where Britain helped!
Initial commit, 11 March
https://github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-app-Android-BETA/commits/master?after=ebcb3221b89333d9f555592aebc934d06608d784+1084&branch=master
Apple announcement of intention to release API, 10 April
https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2020/04/apple-and-google-partner-on-covid-19-contact-tracing-technology/
First app released using API, 28 May
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/the-worlds-first-contact-tracing-app-using-google-and-apples-api-goes-live/
Your record is flawed.
14 million wasted is a lot, but on scale of a 15 billion project it looks smaller.
As for the consultants, I think that the firm that set up our Peoplesoft system ca. 1998 billed at least $125/hour for the project manager. Now, I doubt he billed many 8-hour days, but any such day would have been $1000 or more then. The question ought to be whether one gets value for the money. I did have my doubts about one or two of the expensive consultants from that firm.
This morning on the BBC's 'More or Less' programme, on Radio 4, the team put some reality to Dido Harding's statements about the effectiveness of Test and Trace.
Their improvement in contacting so many more people who have had close contact with someone testing positive for Covid-19 is entirely down to the fact that now they merely ask a person if he or she has told or will tell everyone they share a home with to isolate for the next 10 days, instead of having to phone up everyone themselves.
Dido Harding said that Test and Trace has had the effect of reducing the r rate by between 0.3 and 0.6. But this is compared to nobody isolating at all, which is not what is happening as we are all being told to stay at home regardless of symptoms or tests, if we possibly can, keeping at least 2 metres away form everyone and wearing a face mask while in any public building or with strangers. I do wish the MPs on select committees would ask to see her working, and provide a suitable number of whiteboards and pens for her to use.
The number of tests has zoomed up, but many of these are the less sensitive lateral flow tests used by employers every week to check their staff are ok to work. The much more sensitive PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction?) tests take 2 days and are extremely sensitive. Lateral Flow tests will probably miss people in the early stages of an infection as they only respond to high loads of virus. The PCR test will give you a positive result if you've had Covid-19 and only the debris is still circulating in your blood.
The thing that really scares me is that Harding is treating this like it is her career on the line, rather than people's lives.
The thing that really scares me is that Harding is treating this like it is her career on the line, rather than people's lives.
Her career IS creating disasters, so, it's not on the line. Only more honours and jobs on a wink and nod to look forward to. It's a tough world out there. Someone's got to do it
Part of the delay in PCR tests is getting the sample to the lab, and getting the results back to the right person. If, for example, you happen to be in a major hospital with a full diagnostics lab, you can get the result of a PCR test in a couple of hours (as I did last week, negative, thankfully).
@ Outski, congrats on the negative test, and thanks for the info on the time it actually takes to get a PCR test done. However, it does not explain why my three (negative) tests each took over 4 days to produce a result, that is down to the organisation and administration, which is not entirely transparent to me.
Good luck in keeping negative (at leat in the Covid-19 infection sense).
It depends on the circumstances of the test, I think. If you go to a drive-through or walk-in test centre, those tests are sent to regional diagnostic centres where there are tens of thousands being processed, so there's delay: despatch, allocation, process, despatch results.
If you're in a hospital A&E for something else, it's swab, send over to lab, process, analyse, send back to A&E before you're either discharged or admitted, all on the same site.
See:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/test-and-trace-dodgy-statistics-impact-on-r_uk_601d7a82c5b66c385ef91a9f
"Professor Jon Deeks, who leads Birmingham University’s biostatistics department, said: “... The key measurements are the number of people who get the test results within 24 hours and the number of their contacts who are traced within the next 24 hours.”"
It would seem that waiting for over 4 days (like I have had to three times so far) is not quick enough. Fortunately my tests were all negative.
Sort of. It gets the occasional member promoted for actual expertise. What would really be an improvement would be to make senior members of professions (say presidents of the Royal Society, Royal College of $MedicalProffession etc) ex officio members.
However, the HoC is very reluctant to having an elected second chamber as it would be more of a challenge to them so having a second chamber appointed on the basis of actually knowing what they were talking about would really be an anathema.
Doctor Syntax: "However, the HoC is very reluctant to having an elected second chamber as it would be more of a challenge to them"
I reckon I have a genuine solution to this 'problem' (and I'm a nerd so I did the arithmetic too*).
At a General election, the candidate with the most votes in each constituency gets elected to the House of Commons.
For the Upper or 'Revising' House, the candidate with the second highest total of votes gets elected.
In this process both Houses are elected democratically, the House of Commons is clearly still the primary chamber as its members got the most votes.
It requires no changes whatsoever to the current electoral voting process.
*At one general Election, a few times ago admittedly, I totted up the votes, and the combined Houses in my system would represent the votes of over 75% of those who voted.
The Revising chamber would not be a mirror image of the House of Commons as we have several different parties which gain decent amount of support at elections.
It would mean that in 'safe seats' there would be a great incentive for parties to put up serious candidates who could do a good job rather than joke ones, just for the hell of it.
Senior members who 'lost' their seats could still be in the Revising Chamber.
It would also help to correct the anachronistic cases where the second placed candidates in large constituencies actually gained more votes than the first placed candidates in small ones, but have no seat. (There are about 5 or 6 MP's with fewer votes than the second placed candidates in some constituencies.)
BTW, Senior scientists and professionals are occasionally 'elevated' to the HoL. The current Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees, being one.
Yup that sounds like a government contract
Pay for bad code
Pay for bug fixes because of bad code
Pay for bug fixes to the bug fixes because of bad code
Scrap the system and pay the exit clause
Rehire the same team and expect a different outcome - total insanity
Well done Dildo
I'm sorry fellow El Reg members. I have sinned. This morning, with not a lot to occupy the old grey matter, I chanced upon a televisual feast. It was a commons select committee starring our old fiend [deliberate omission of "r"] Dido Harding, Nee Clueless.
The poor thing was asked a set of simple questions "How many postal covid tests have been carried out" - the poor child hadn't a clue, she did a bit of the old Paul Daniels magic trick and pulled a random figure out of the top hat.
In the end some lacky intervened and pulled her out of the old cesspool.
The whole performance was cringeworthy, she has clearly not studied or carried out her brief, it shows, it's live. Time to put her in the jolly old Tower.
Toodle Pip,
Mark.
Time to put her in the jolly old Tower.
That's a risky thing to do. Wouldn't want to frighten the Ravens and make them fly away. They are already straying due to low visitor numbers due to the pandemic, and one has been missing for several weeks now...
"Legend has it the monarchy and the Tower of London will fall if its six resident ravens leave the fortress."
There's much being trumpeted about mass testing and surge testing in areas where the South Africa variant has been diagnosed.
No mention of using the TaT system though. It would appear that even the powers that be are more than aware the it isn't "world leading", or "the cherry on the cake", or even "a silver bullet" - they are tacitly acknowledging that it isn't fit for purpose.
(my research has only been BBC & C4 news, so possibly flawed)
Boris insisted on a visit to Valneva, a French vaccine manufacturer in Livingston. He was there solely to make a political point that vaccines are successful in the UK. He was warned in advance that he was breaching Scottish travel regulations, but he insisted as PM he had the right to. He obviously mistakes having the right to do something, and doing the right thing. We've since found out that one out of eight of the workforce already had covid, he knew and he'd ignored that while touring with his politico and media posse.
The Wiki entry for Dido says:
"In February 2017, Harding announced that she would stand down as CEO of TalkTalk in order to focus more on her public service activities."
If what we have seen is her public service, please return forthwith to commerce. Preferably retire. Lots of people who have genuinely put their experience to use in public service have done so for nothing or a notional salary.
Interesting how most news stories on the subject mention Harding's time at Talktalk, even though that has very little bearing on the matter at hand.
However very few mention that she was crowned head of test and trace without any application process or due diligence apparently being carried out. Nor do they mention who her spouse happens to be. Both of which surely have a bearing on he ability to do the job.
Furthermore seldom is her role in the Jockey Club and her relationship to the Cheltenham Festival. You know the event which would almost certainly have been proved to be a super spreader event were it not for the fact that the government had chosen to suspend test and trace before it took place. Again this shows that she was never suitable for the role of head of test and trace if only because of a conflict of interest. The government allowed the festival to go ahead against scientific advice and it is therefore in the interests of the government that no research is ever carried out that may prove that it resulted in a spike in cases. Therefore placing one of the executives responsible for the festival in charge of test and trace can at best be considered questionable.
Oh and before anybody mentions the Liverpool v Atletico Madrid match. As has been mentioned so many times before there was an interesting bit of poliitcal maneuvering around the two events. Not only has it been pointed out that the government had to allow the Liverpool match if they wanted to allow Cheltenham to go ahead, but shortly after the two events took place some Tory ministers went on the offensive against Liverpool without directing any criticism of the Cheltenham festival. When interviewers brought up the Cheltenham festival those same ministers dropped their criticism of Liverpool FC.
"Interesting how most news stories on the subject mention Harding's time at Talktalk, even though that has very little bearing on the matter at hand."
It has a great bearing on the matter at hand. It shows that she should never be put in a position of responsibility. Her record there should be a stick to beat anyone involved in her current appointment.
It was made quite clear to them at the start that the developers understood nothing about how Bluetooth works. Google and Apple did understand that, which is why they got together to write their new firmware. But Matt Hancock is essentially technically illiterate and preferred to believe his app developing chums who weren't very concerned with firmware, radio or basic physics. Instead, they claimed they knew more than Apple and Google and were happy to let the money roll in while they got to play with the dinosaurs on the Isle of Wight.
It was already a poisoned chalice when Dido came into the picture, but, like the Wicked Queen, she made it even more toxic.
When the government started talking about TnT apps, I picked up a flip phone that works with my carrier. Should I be asked to show my phone, that's the one I'll be showing. My "smart" phone rarely has BT, Wi-Fi or Data on. I turn those on when I need them and shut them off when I'm done. I even managed to get the telco to turn off Text. I found it to be too much of a time waster. People can call or send an email.
If you work in your own office, don't have messaging apps, text and all of those things, you tend to not get interrupted nearly as much and get more done. It's so Pavlovian to see the masses all look at their phones whenever an electronic chime sounds.
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