The Politics Thread 2020

[Angry Ram]

1 hour ago, 86 Schmokes & a Pancake said:

If it is then unlike with the UK, I think the EU will breathe a collective sigh of relief to be honest. 

Italy contributes about 11% to the EU budget.. I think they will be missed.

[A Ram for All Seasons]

1 hour ago, Angry Ram said:

Itexit could be a thing. 

Now that Boris has got Brexit done, the UK has left the EU's European Medicines Agency and so it will have to do all its clinical trials on its own. It is also leaving the EU’s rapid authorisation mechanism for new pandemic vaccines and medicines and so it will have to wait longer for them than EU member states. The UK has already withdrawn from the EU’s emergency bulk buying mechanism for vaccines and medicines, which mean the UK will have to pay more and will be more vulnerable to extortion by the likes of Trump.

I know Italy still has a lot of unreconstructed Mussolini types but, in the current situation with thousands dying, do you really think that any Italian politician would be daft enough to put a figure on all the savings that could be made by not joining the European effort to develop a Coronavirus vaccine and paint it on the side of a bus?

[ariotofmyown]

2 hours ago, A Ram for All Seasons said:

Now that Boris has got Brexit done, the UK has left the EU's European Medicines Agency and so it will have to do all its clinical trials on its own. It is also leaving the EU’s rapid authorisation mechanism for new pandemic vaccines and medicines and so it will have to wait longer for them than EU member states. The UK has already withdrawn from the EU’s emergency bulk buying mechanism for vaccines and medicines, which mean the UK will have to pay more and will be more vulnerable to extortion by the likes of Trump.

What's your point? Everyone knew they were voting for that, didn't they? Johnson told us all in his infamous Brexit column. Or did he put these details in the 'reasons to stay' column.

[ramesses]

12 hours ago, 86 Schmokes & a Pancake said:

Shock horror...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/exclusive-ministers-warned-nhs-could-not-cope-pandemic-three/

Thanks, but given Telegraph pay wall I found this Guardian alternative…

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/29/uk-strategy-to-address-pandemic-threat-not-properly-implemented

As I said in a previous post, it’s pretty obvious that at least some aspects of UK government planning over the past decade for this inevitable crisis have proved inadequate. It looks like we’re now starting to get some insight into why that might be the case.

There’s plenty here to chew over and I expect there’ll be more information about this soon enough. However I was surprised at how the likelihood of pandemic risk was described here by one of the main experts involved in the previous planning. He’s quoted in this article as saying that, ‘looked at alone, a pandemic had appeared unlikely’.

Yet the 2008 Cabinet Office document I mentioned in a previous post had noted that a pandemic was ‘highly probable’. That document indicated that it was the most likely major natural risk facing the UK (ahead of flooding, for example).

This Cabinet Office document was then updated in 2017 and the pandemic risk was (similarly) described as having a high likelihood of occurring ‘in the next five years’ and that it would have a severe impact. The updated document also indicated that this was as likely to occur (again, ‘in the next five years’) as severe storms and gales and was relatively more likely than various kinds of severe flooding.

Neither the 2008 or 2017 editions of this document suggest that a pandemic was, or appeared to be, ‘unlikely’.

[Angry Ram]

9 hours ago, A Ram for All Seasons said:

Now that Boris has got Brexit done, the UK has left the EU's European Medicines Agency and so it will have to do all its clinical trials on its own. It is also leaving the EU’s rapid authorisation mechanism for new pandemic vaccines and medicines and so it will have to wait longer for them than EU member states. The UK has already withdrawn from the EU’s emergency bulk buying mechanism for vaccines and medicines, which mean the UK will have to pay more and will be more vulnerable to extortion by the likes of Trump.

I know Italy still has a lot of unreconstructed Mussolini types but, in the current situation with thousands dying, do you really think that any Italian politician would be daft enough to put a figure on all the savings that could be made by not joining the European effort to develop a Coronavirus vaccine and paint it on the side of a bus?

Yep, the groundswell is there, the seeds are sown.

[TramRam]

11 hours ago, Angry Ram said:

Itexit could be a thing. 

I always thought it was TRexit when Italy bail out of the EU.

Pppffftt, What's in a name eh!

[Uptherams]

7 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

What's your point? Everyone knew they were voting for that, didn't they? Johnson told us all in his infamous Brexit column. Or did he put these details in the 'reasons to stay' column.

And yet it is UK companies coming up with new ventilator designs. It is UK companies being approached by governments for antibody test kits. Italy buys PPE from China, not gifted, the UK is manufacturing it's own, to ensure high standards and delivery dates and orders are met. 

But we must keep talking our tiny little backward nation down. 

[ariotofmyown]

16 minutes ago, Uptherams said:

And yet it is UK companies coming up with new ventilator designs. It is UK companies being approached by governments for antibody test kits. Italy buys PPE from China, not gifted, the UK is manufacturing it's own, to ensure high standards and delivery dates and orders are met. 

But we must keep talking our tiny little backward nation down. 

Very weird comment. Don't think anyone has criticised British manufacturing or said anything derogatory about our nation.

People have been asking questions about failures in government planning and strategy. So has the Daily Telegraph who is usually Johnson's mouthpiece. Perhaps it's a coordinated effort to pass the blame onto previous regimes.

[Uptherams]

32 minutes ago, ariotofmyown said:

Very weird comment. Don't think anyone has criticised British manufacturing or said anything derogatory about our nation.

People have been asking questions about failures in government planning and strategy. So has the Daily Telegraph who is usually Johnson's mouthpiece. Perhaps it's a coordinated effort to pass the blame onto previous regimes.

Countless times in the past when debbie downers have talked manufacturing in this country down, I would refer to how our strength and future lies in advanced manufacturing and IP, only to be sneered at. 

You guys do it all the time ???

[Stive Pesley]

2 hours ago, ramesses said:

As I said in a previous post, it’s pretty obvious that at least some aspects of UK government planning over the past decade for this inevitable crisis have proved inadequate. It looks like we’re now starting to get some insight into why that might be the case.

It's not really even that difficult to see. We know it was always a high probability threat, we've always known, and unlike flooding and storms which tend to only hit certain small areas - it was an indiscriminate threat that would affect everyone.

The reason we did nothing was because there was no profit to be made from planning for it. Because capitalism is totally unable to deal with stuff like this. It's not a system built to preserfve itself. It's a system built to encourage profit at all costs, including it's own destruction.

But it's "better" than socialism remember?

Cue: out Tory chums trying to explain why I'm wrong on some sort of tenuous technicality

[FindernRam]

5 minutes ago, SchtivePesley said:

Because capitalism is totally unable to deal with stuff like this. It's not a system built to preserfve itself. It's a system built to encourage profit at all costs, including it's own destruction.

I'm not sure that non-capitalist China coped particularly well, and perhaps you could point out a socialist state that is coping?

[GboroRam]

14 minutes ago, FindernRam said:

I'm not sure that non-capitalist China coped particularly well, and perhaps you could point out a socialist state that is coping?

China, whatever political framework it is, doesn't do anything for the benefit of its citizens. That's what we're saying needs changing.

[Van der MoodHoover]

42 minutes ago, SchtivePesley said:

It's not really even that difficult to see. We know it was always a high probability threat, we've always known, and unlike flooding and storms which tend to only hit certain small areas - it was an indiscriminate threat that would affect everyone.

The reason we did nothing was because there was no profit to be made from planning for it. Because capitalism is totally unable to deal with stuff like this. It's not a system built to preserfve itself. It's a system built to encourage profit at all costs, including it's own destruction.

But it's "better" than socialism remember?

Cue: out Tory chums trying to explain why I'm wrong on some sort of tenuous technicality

Being a Chief Risk Officer, I am well used to the "Cassandra" effect, and the fact that most of my colleagues see risk management as a tax on the business and so seek to minimize its costs first and foremost.

Then there are events like this, which highlight why forward planning is a good idea, but which also highlight the fact that generally we are very poor at explaining the risk trade-offs we make - I say that as a general statement.

For example, when the outsourcing boom was on, nobody was explaining this in terms of "we believe the additional benefit to be gained through short term labour cost arbitrage outweighs the cost of building future fragility into our supply chains but in recognition of the latter possibility we will be taking the following actions to mitigate the risk....."

We might very well be in a place of our choosing, but the lack of maturity in both our political system and our ability to hold decisions to account mean that we suspect we are not and that we have somehow been "duped" into this situation. 

[Wolfie]

Hindsight is marvellous isn't it.

Why haven't we hollowed out Snowdonia and the Cairngorms, to use as bunkers when the meteor hits?

[Anon]

14 minutes ago, Van Wolfie said:

Hindsight is marvellous isn't it.

Why haven't we hollowed out Snowdonia and the Cairngorms, to use as bunkers when the meteor hits?

We would have done by now if the ignorant racist proles didn't keep ducking our communist asses at the ballet box!

[GboroRam]

28 minutes ago, Van Wolfie said:

Hindsight is marvellous isn't it.

Why haven't we hollowed out Snowdonia and the Cairngorms, to use as bunkers when the meteor hits?

You could call it hindsight, but when experts have been predicting it, is it really?

But then again, we're post the era of listening to experts, that's why Brexit is such a great idea.

[Van der MoodHoover]

28 minutes ago, Van Wolfie said:

Hindsight is marvellous isn't it.

Why haven't we hollowed out Snowdonia and the Cairngorms, to use as bunkers when the meteor hits?

It isn't hindsight if you are being presented with authoritative independent research that shows the likelihood is some way higher than "remote" over the short term. It's a deliberate policy decision to disregard something.

[FindernRam]

My last job before retirement was as a Risk and Business Continuity Manager. I had no formal training beyond 30+ years Project and Programme Management. The plan was to do some courses, maybe to Bronze Commander over time

Day 1 in the job SARS!  Talk about on the job training. Of course in due time SARS died down (no pun there) and life went back to normal, but there was a legacy: All departments, projects and teams were required to generate succession plans, not just for key people but major reductions in available staff. There were plans put in place with company communication strategies for how people could be told to stay away or come back in (even a few years ago mobiles and social media were "rare". New projects were required to produce Business continuity plans as part of normal programme risk , but over time it was harder to persuade hard pressed managers to create and update these plans. Now 9 years on I have no idea what happens todays but @Van der MoodHoover is right.

You feel like banging your head on a brick wall, but you don't 'cos there's a risk it might fall on you.?

[Wolfie]

17 minutes ago, GboroRam said:

You could call it hindsight, but when experts have been predicting it, is it really?

But then again, we're post the era of listening to experts, that's why Brexit is such a great idea.

 

16 minutes ago, Van der MoodHoover said:

It isn't hindsight if you are being presented with authoritative independent research that shows the likelihood is some way higher than "remote" over the short term. It's a deliberate policy decision to disregard something.

I'm guessing that there would be as many other experts predicting that any new infection would be more likely to be like SARS/H1N1 etc - nasty but relatively easy to contain.

[Van der MoodHoover]

2 minutes ago, Van Wolfie said:

 

I'm guessing that there would be as many other experts predicting that any new infection would be more likely to be like SARS/H1N1 etc - nasty but relatively easy to contain.

You should of course get multiple inputs - and if possible establish a plausible range rather than a single (potentially doom laden) point estimate......that is quite correct.

 

But then there should be nothing wrong with you sharing that analysis at a high level and being prepared to back up why you have gone low or gone high.

 

Too often you suspect that people simply cherry pick the view that gives then least short term grief and then present it as "the" truth.........it is a poor behaviour.