News: 1591973105

...oh yes, it is: it's the worst in the world. Even with the stiff competition from the likes of Bolsonaro!

We are second worst in the world on most metrics, though the worst is different depending on which metric you look at. I guess that makes us worst overall.

It is world beating in the same way that Mr Chris Addison says our transport system is 'World Beating":

In the UK we have the BEST rail replacement bus service in the world!

So there!

(Of course, it would be nicer if we had the best railways in the world, but you can't have everything.)

That statement is a bit cheap on statistical accuracy given the otherwise reasonable summary of Thursday's instalment of the UK soap opera. Try comparing death rates per million across Europe and you will see that, although the UK rate is bad, it is not yet a "world beater". More like "primus inter pares". To adapt Baroness Harding's metaphor : using that statistic is no way to ice the cake.

BELGIUM to you sir.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

show the number one is Belgium, but the UK is a hot contender

That's the annoying thing. We "the people", quite rightly critique gov.uk on their crappy performance, and then they just find somewhere that's worse and say "look, we're not _that_ bad".

But here's the thing - where do *WE* expect to be? Surely, the UK should have managed this as well or better than other countries? If we do not expect that of ourselves, what does that say? (and by extension, that attitude most bode very badly for our future brexit strategy).

IMHO gov.uk have handled this piss-poorly.

There's no excuse for where we find ourselves.

If they can't figure this out, then they really should consider their positions and call an election.

And I know that last bit prolly sounds like a pipe-dream, but exactly why should *WE* be putting up with this incompetence?

Because they have an 80 seat majority and can quite happily stick two fingers up to the rest of the country, like they did over the Cummings scandal, for the next four and a half years.

> future brexit strategy

You owe me a new keyboard.

As to the rest of your comment... my father when I was a schoolboy used to say "YOU DON'T COMPARE WITH THE WORST... YOU COMPARE WITH THE BEST" whenever I told him my grades weren't that bad. Back then I thought he was just an old git but I've since seen the light.

Right now there are the countries that were able to shut down completely before the virus was loose in the community - like Taiwan and New Zealand - and countries that had it spreading for weeks before it was acknowledged as a pandemic - like the UK.

Faced with prevalent infection in the country the Government had very few choices available. It's easy to sit to the side and criticise, but have you heard the shit being spewed?

"We should have locked down earlier" is the attack on the Government, who were being advised by SAGE not to lockdown the same week that they finally did.

"We should re-open the schools" cried the politicians, before backing their union paymasters in preventing that happen.

"Where is all the PPE?" asked the union activist nurses, while their colleagues modelled it in fucking Tik Tok videos.

"Why didn't you protect our care homes?" bleat the media, yet don't fucking dare ask Sturgeon why Scotland's care homes have many many more deaths.

"It's too early to stop lockdown" cry the cowardly sheep, as they flock to the streets to attack war memorials.

Aspects of the Government response have been shambolic but to pretend that the Government have managed this any worse than their peers across the world, or indeed any worse than the cunts like Kneel to the Mob Starmer would have done (bearing in mind he has no answers - for anything, ever) is wishful thinking.

I don't like the current situation but politically motivated attacks aren't helping anybody.

Every reporting entity is cooking the books, either intentionally, or because scientific methodology is beyond the elected igits comprehension or scope of caring. Or the standard they follow is much different. This is when the fake newsers advance their agenda. I will concede there are a few countries or regions that have gotten it right, but they are the exceptions.

it's not true

This would be the group of politically active left wing scientists.

So not actually independent, but motivated to some certain degree to attack the government, on the basis not of science, but politics.

While that doesn't necessarily invalidate their opinions, it's a sad day when El Reg has descended to the level of Sky and the BBC, in presenting potentially politically motivated opinion without pointing out the political bias.

Interestingly, as you should mention prejudice, the author of this piece used to write for the Grauniad, you'll be surprised to gather.

You obviously don't have a full understanding of the meaning of bias. Bias is the thing that causes other people to disagree with my opinion. If they agree with my opinion, it is called "expert analysis".

...that's fine. But there's nothing wrong with using a metaphor now and again. Especially with cake. Mmmm, cake.

Especially with cake. Mmmm, cake.

Cake metaphors are an unfortunate choice in a time of social crisis.

I think of course of an Austrian member of the ill-fated French aristocracy, (also with the title Queen) and her poor choice of words RE: 'cake'. Her unfortunate fate, almost as unfortunate as the choice of Dodo Harding for another important leadership role.

>and her poor choice of words RE: 'cake'.

Fake news. That is a misquote due to bad English translation. It was 'brioche'.

Baroness Hardup has at least got sufficient time to develop a world-beating performance for the pantomime season.

I wonder if she was subjected to the [1]loyalty test or whether her background guaranteed that her compliance, if not her competence, could be relied upon.

[1] https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1271417243944058887

She is being relied on by many people, mostly the hackers who have your talk talk details......

Daughter of a Lord, PPE from Oxford where she was a mate of pig-face-f**ker, and also presumably the Blonde cockwomble, Married to a Tory MP/Lord who wants to scrap the NHS - whilst she runs NHS Improvement!

Oh and appears to be an incompetent Tory apparatchik.

Her loyalty is assured if only for the fact that since Talk-Talk her snout is 100% dependent on troughs provided by Tory governments.

I could have written a COVID app following the Apple/Google guidelines for both iOS and Android in about a week. On my own.

NHSX have no excuse.

Yeah, but then you wouldn't have been able to award a £260m contract to people you know in order for them to suffer from Not-Invented-Here syndrome and piss about with approaches that everyone else already know don't work.

The aim wasn't just to get a working app - that's easy - it's to get a working app whilst filling their mates pockets. Embarrasingly for them though, turns out their mates are as incompetent as you might expect from people who's work seems to be solely derived from knowing the right people

@ iron

Considering who is running the show NHSX have some valid excuses.

Is this cake going to be low fat, lactose and gluten free, vegan friendly?

Yes they do. NHS is in the name.

Ceredigion Council (a county on the coast of mid-Wales, pop 70,000) started its own local test & trace system in March. It didn't wait for government permission.

Ceredigion has had a total of 46 cases. 7 deaths. Lowest in the mainland UK. And has a relatively elderly population.

If the rest of the UK had similar figures total deaths would probably be about 5000, not 60,000

But Johnson has done brilliantly (according to him)

What options are there to overthrow a government between elections?

I ordered a test on Monday (as part of a study, I've not got symptoms, just hay fever).

It was delivered on Tuesday.

I did it on Tuesday night and a courier collected it on Wednesday morning.

Still not had a result.

If I was ill, contact tracing wouldn't have started by now, and people I'd potentially infected would still be wandering round oblivious.

Whereas the Ceredigion tracing process was based on people being symptomatic, not testing positive. Which is why they've only had 46 cases in the entire county.

The testing clearly still isn't fit for purpose, and by extension neither is the tracing. Piss up and brewery spring to mind.

In fact, it's beer-o-clock...

Matt Hancock & Dido Harding, you couldn't make it up.

John Crace, the political sketch writer in the Guardian, put it nicely when he wrote "it’s going to take Typhoid Dido quite a while until the number of people she’s prevented from getting the coronavirus outweighs the number she’s helped to infect." ... by letting the Cheltenham festival go ahead.