The ultimate poster-girl for failing upwards does it again

Plenty of poster boys like that in politics too.

Sh!t floats.

The report says that the government shouldn't have listened to the scientists.

I'm not sure how neutral this document really is.

Scientists in general or a particular group?

“In the first three months the strategy reflected official scientific advice to the Government which was accepted and implemented. When the Government moved from the ‘contain’ stage to the ‘delay’ stage, that approach involved trying to manage the spread of covid through the population rather than to stop it spreading altogether […] The fact that the UK approach reflected a consensus between official scientific advisers and the Government indicates a degree of groupthink that was present at the time which meant we were not as open to approaches being taken elsewhere as we should have been.”

“We accept that it is difficult to challenge a widely held scientific consensus. But accountability in a democracy depends on elected decision-makers taking advice, but examining, questioning and challenging it before making their own decisions.”

ie: Government is at fault because the experts were wrong.

I don't Boris did as he missed the first 5 COBRA meetings on Covid

It was written by 2 tory ex ministers. We're lucky it got published - if only to delay a public enquiry.

I think some of the blame needs to be levelled at whoever thought it was a good idea to appoint her to the role. The fact that T&T was under the watch of someone who had been in charge during such a monumental data breach in a previous position, and had handled it so badly, was the key factor in me deciding not to use the T&T app.

Wasn't it Matt Hancock, who also wanted to promote her to be the head of the NHS, until he was sacked for philandering rather than gross incompetence?

until he was sacked for philandering rather than gross incompetence?

He wasn't sacked for philandering; he was sacked for hypocritically breaking the social distancing rule his department was espousing. Someone so vocally dedicated to the introduction of apps for everything should have realised the potential for someone else's app to be watching him.

Matt Hancock had got him self in to a nice position, because he couldn't be fired by BJ (who seems not to be good at firing people in the first place), because BJ would then be agreeing what Dominic Cummings had said.

Mysteriously, a few weeks later, a leak of internal security camera footage occurs that shows MH to not be following the social distancing rules he so thoroughly espoused and he has to resign.

The other way of looking at it was that Hancock was performing badly in public ( eg: the fake crying weirdness ), but Boris couldn't sack him because that would say "our handling of the NHS has been poor".

And then the video leaks, Boris gets to get rid of Hancock without the opposition being able to present it as an admission of failure.

My theory was always that Boris loyalists leaked it.

I doubt this hypocrisy ever was / is / will be high on Boris' agenda (or any politician's for that matter), I suspect it was just an excuse to get rid of him , probably some internal in-fighting.

> Wasn't it Matt Hancock, who also wanted to promote her to be the head of the NHS, until he was sacked for philandering rather than gross incompetence?

From what I recall it was more manhandling than philandering!

The fundamental problem is that bureaucrats barge ahead on these programmes without either exercising the scientific method or asking scientists to validate what they propose. It's perfectly possible that the good baroness had no notion either that the data were outdated or that their being outdated mattered.

The scientific method is little more than a rigorous approach to thinking, that should be exercised by anyone making strategic decisions or far-reaching plans, not just by folks in white coats. It's so important that it should be part of the general school curriculum. Sadly, it isn't, so the results are quite predictable..

Right assessment but you missed out several actors.

It was also Private sector (Tory donating) Management Consultants re-inventing wheels that the NHS already had simply because the Govt wanted to transfer public funds to the Private sector, regardless of whether there were any benefits for the public.

Managment consultants are ok - provided they are directed and steered correctly. Once you start letting them steer the conversation your are f*cked. Which is exactly what happened - a cynic might say by design given idiot was in charge.

The NHS itself did not (as far as I'm aware) have a centre of excellence for developing public facing apps of this kind. Suggesting that it was an evil Tory plot to divert money to their mates rather misses out the long history of failure of government IT projects in general and NHS projects in particular.

No-one in the NHS was ready for this requirement, and external contractors and consultants were pretty much inevitable at that stage. That it was handled badly came as no surprise whatsoever, and whilst Harding deserves the harshest of criticism, it would be a failure to learn to suggest that no-one else in the NHS and Whitehall shared any responsibility for the cock-up.

It's rare I'll stick up for the school curriculum but the scientific method *is* taught. The problem lies that its set up to push a student's ability to parrot facts above testing their ability to demonstrate critical thinking and improve their "comprehension" of data from multiple sources (that they may have had to find themselves).

The issue here is that muppets employ muppets and politicians have no competence or accountability sufficient to drive them to achieve long term improvement in the seats they hold for such a brief period. An education secretary has little if any exposure to the real world of challenges facing education despite holding the sole most impactful role in the country. The same can be said for any of the posts, such as Health, Transport, Culture or Home Secretary.

The only criteria to get in to such a post is: to be sufficiently likeable that an electorate chooses you above their traditional candidate from their favoured party; or to be sufficiently likeable that a party places you for election in a traditionally successful area. If you meet either of these and are subsequently sufficiently likeable to someone who gets in charge, you too may find yourself demonstrating a staggering lack of competence and running something in to the ground at a national level.

being married to a conservative MP may be the answer to your question.

thought it was a good idea

It could be a good idea if one worked for our adversaries. If T&T fiasco knocked few bn out of the economy, then it will slightly narrow the gap between the UK and e.g. China.

Multiple that by failures in all other areas and you may start to think whether this government is actually working for us.

Exactly.

Perhaps it's a coincidence that major donors to government have been Russian Oligarchs and Disaster Capitalists. Both groups benefit hugely from a collapsing UK economy, society, rule of law, etc.

I fear we've lost a war that we didn't even know we were involved in.

I have a vague idea this has already been implemented in some sort of sci-fi short story, about a guy born with a 'bad luck' chromosone, or such (unexplained) trait. They finally sent him to work for competition, if I remember correctly. Arguably, the incompetence in this particular case has been won, long and hard way, rather than inherited...

Yes, it definitely contributed to me choosing to avoid it too. I wouldn't trust her with my dog's medical information, and I don't have a dog.

But even if you ignore the data breach, Harding's record at TalkTalk was one of utter incompetence; she lost 10% market share in 5 years, mis-allocated resources on a grand scale, and then responded to the financial mess she had created through aggressive 'cost cutting' of her already underfunded infosec team. The data breach and ensuing PR disaster was just the crowning glory of Dido's career path of being lavishly rewarded for totally failing to manage the most basic aspects of her job.

Even if she wasn't the modern face of data insecurity, she'd have been an extremely poor appointee to run anything more complex than a corner shop.

I think you'll find it doesn't matter how crap they are, fat cats always land feet first. Nothing to do with friends, family, money or, God forbid, competency ...

... according to Paris....

That's just under 2 years worth of weekly Brexit benefit. Bargain.

BTW anyone want any protective equipment you can catch me down Priti Patel's local. Or contact me through my Las Vegas works number: 555-YOU-MUGS. That's 555-YOU-MUGS.

That figure was the amount allocated, not spent.

And the amount spent was mostly ( and I mean the vast majority ) spent on testing. Ie: performing tests. The costs of buying and distributing tests. The cost of processing PCR tests.

Anybody who claims that £37bn was spent on whatever it is that you are suggesting is lying.

The Trace part of T&T ( ie: the bit that went to SERCO ) was less than £1bn.

Ah, OK, so only a thousand million pounds was wasted. Nothing compared to the dodgy "VIP lane" deals done for PPE, where friends of Tories managed to make millions of pounds each.

It was a third party track and trace not NHS -- vaccine roll out which was NHS has worked well for the most part and I understand the NHS had its own trace and trace (primarily for STDs) that was ignored during the set up in spite of their competence. https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-why-did-england-ignore-an-army-of-existing-contact-tracers-140825 This was a major failing from day one.

The important point is that NHS track and trace failed and we can all come together in blaming the NHS and leveraging synergies with the dynamic private sector.

I propose that lessons will be learned, game changing, best in class lessons.

Build back blether.

Baroness Dido Harding gets promoted, because there's no better reward for repeated failures. Lesson to be taught to kids of all ages, I suppose. With a small * for *as long as you know the right people.

She is a wonderful role model for kids.

Children - work hard, stay in school, achieve mastery of a subject and you can be sure you won't become Baroness Dido (also beware of middle aged men with weird hair making strange offers to you)

Wrong department, same fuck ups... I called this back in 2017.

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2017/02/01/dido_of_carnage_steps_down_from_talktalk/#c_3091293