Alas, I refer to Simon Heffer's superb history of Britain, or to be precise, the British government, during WWI. Pay no attention to my misleading title above, the book, "Staring at God", is essential to anyone interested in the governance of Britain - then and now! Even so, I must warn you that you will not be the same person at the end of it. I have still not finished it because I can only take small amounts at a time. Of course, "as any fule do no", WWI was an unmitigated disaster for virtually all the national participants but a great deal of the blame for British suffering attaches to the two nincompoops, Herbert Henry Asquith and David Lloyd George, who led the nation through 1914-18.
It is difficult - although Simon Heffer manages it superbly - to grasp the incredible stupidity and dereliction of duty by these two utterly incompetent men. Dammit, Asquith spent time during cabinet meetings writing love letters to his lady friend, whilst in 'Flander's fields' British soldiers were being slaughtered wholesale under the military leadership of total incompetents!
Alas, the long lesson to be learned from this book is that nothing has changed! Even a quick glance at the occupant of No. 10 is enough to confirm your worst suspicions.
Cr-app ...
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/contact-tracing-app-isle-of-wight-trial
We really are lost, aren't we?
Someone show me a light please - even if it isn't the one at the end of the tunnel.
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Thursday, 18 June 2020 at 08:57
Hancock's half hour a bit of a spectacular yesterday ...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/18/matt-hancock-can-put-positive-spin-shambles-tonight-proved-style/
Well, that’s one puzzle solved. About two months ago, Matt Hancock announced plans for an app that would track down people who had come into contact with the virus. It sounded great. Yet as the weeks went by, the Government’s message kept mysteriously changing.
First, we were told the app was “absolutely essential”, and that it would be launched in mid-May. But then, after mid-May came and went, we were told that the app was merely “the cherry on the cake” of a “world-beating” system, and that it would only be launched “when it is right to do so”. Mere days later, however, we were told that actually the app “isn’t a priority”, and that it could wait until “the winter”.
What was going on? This afternoon we finally found out. Basically: the app didn’t work. So this absolutely essential and world-beating piece of technology had now been scrapped.
Such a story could easily be viewed as an embarrassment for Mr Hancock. Thank goodness, then, for his magnificent gift for spin. This evening, at the No10 news conference, the Health Secretary delivered a PR masterclass.
“I want to be upfront and open,” he began, “about the challenges that we, and other countries, have been facing.”
Exemplary start. Budding politicians, listen and learn. “I want to be upfront and open”: look how brave and honest I am. “The challenges we’ve been facing”: much nicer way to put it than “the mistakes we’ve made”. Note also that crucial parenthesis, “and other countries”, spoken with heavy emphasis. Translation: see, I’m not the only one who’s screwed up.
On he went. Having “rigorously” tested the app, his team had “discovered a technical barrier” – which had also been hit by “every other country that is building its own app” (again, not just him). But not to worry, because he had “agreed to join forces with Apple and Google” (great use of “agreed”, implying that Apple and Google had been begging him, and that he had given them his gracious consent). And now, together, he and the two tech giants were going to build a new app – and this one would work. “Because for me,” he declared solemnly, “what matters is what works.”
Journalists asked when this new app might be ready.
“We’re not going to put a date on it, I’m afraid,” sniffed Mr Hancock, “because I’m absolutely determined that it’s got to be working effectively… I will not recommend people download an app until I’m confident that that’s the right thing do… Rather than just putting this out even though there are problems with it, I’d far rather get this right…”
How nobly he said this – as if everyone else in the country was shouting, “We want an app that doesn’t work! Give us something completely useless, right this minute!”, while he, the lone voice of reason, was bravely defying them, determined to stand true to his conviction that the app should actually work before he released it.
What a performance. World-beating. The lies and distortion first phase of the cover up begins before the investigation has even started. Scumbaggery of the the first order, exquisite.
Blighty's state just slaughtered 60,000 Brits, 3x the run rate of Adolf Hitler in WWII. We don't need a public enquiry, we need Nuremberg style trials.
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Friday, 19 June 2020 at 08:55
The Wikipedia founder could have a version of the Jerry app that's already up and running out in 2 weeks ...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/18/contact-tracing-app-situation-uk-height-incompetence/
Mr Wales has claimed he can launch a German-style contact-tracing app in the UK within ‘two weeks’, as he blasted the NHS’s aborted effort as the ‘height of incompetence’.
Jimmy Wales, who founded the online encyclopedia in 2001, said he could build a version of the app that runs on Apple and Google’s software at ‘zero cost to the taxpayers’ if the NHS agreed.
His offer came as the Government axed its attempt to build its own version of the contact tracing NHS app yesterday to switch over to the Apple and Google model, which has been adopted by most other European countries.
Speaking on Twitter yesterday, Mr Wales, 53, said: “If the NHS will support it, I could roll out the German Corona-Warn-App (privacy respecting, official diagnosis rather than self-reporting as I understand it) in [a] short time at zero cost to the taxpayers. If the government can't pull themselves together, we can.
“This contact tracing app situation in the UK is the height of incompetence on so many levels.”
The American entrepreneur later added he could “roll it out in 2 weeks time” using the software already made available by Apple and Google.
Germany, who were referenced by Mr Wales, launched their contact-tracing, based on the Apple and Google version, on Tuesday after ditching their own version back in April.
The UK Government has not set a new date for when it’s new contact tracing app, which uses the bluetooth connections on people’s phones to register when they come into close contact that could spread the virus, will be released. On Tuesday, health minister Lord Bethell said it may not be launched until the winter.
Yesterday, privacy activists criticised the Government for taking so long to abandon its app, which collects data from users unlike the Apple and Google version.
Silkie Carlo, the director of the privacy pressure group Big Brother Watch, said: “This has been a slow motion car crash. It shows how ill-judged the centralised, data-hungry approach was. We warned the Government’s disregard for privacy was out of touch with public concerns and the app wouldn’t work.
“The Government has now wasted precious time and millions of pounds of public money on a failed approach that they were warned was going to fail, and now we’re back at square one.”
Where is the opposition when it comes to their responsibility to bring this outrage and the serial negligence and incompetence of HMG and the state to the public's attention? Nowhere.
Nowhere because they know they would do exactly the same with the same pattern of centralised state control.
The level of outrage that should be there in any civilised country against its state for the manslaughter of 60,000 people is simply not there.
No opposition, no low state / no state Libertarian rebel voice in the Conservatives, nothing at all.
Democracy has failed under Blighty's "Democratic Centralism" operational constitution because there are no alternatives on offer and it is therefore not democracy at all. It is merely re-elected dictatorship.
Blighty is the failed state I knew it would be revealed to be after Brexit.
And it's all downhill from here.
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Friday, 19 June 2020 at 09:18