Whitehall – a hotbed of incompetence?

 

There were a few rather intriguing news items in yesterday’s and today’s MSM – items which ought to have created some waves inside the Westminster Bubble. Obviously one wouldn’t expect any sort of soul-searching, any sort of critical questions being asked in our covid-obsessed MSM, for example about quangos and Whitehall Mandarins.

Let’s look at the two “Covid” items which rightfully ought to have produced pertinent questions instead of bland reports in ‘Our MSM’. One is in regard to that Covid vaccine:

“Kate Bingham, chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, has said a vaccine for everyone living in the UK is “not going to happen” and insisted the overall aim of the Government is to vaccinate 30 million out of the 67 million population. Ms Bingham added: “We just need to vaccinate everyone at risk.” The health chief has added any future treatment would be for people aged over 50-years-old with health workers and the vulnerable given top priority.” (link)

Let’s leave aside the fact that this means there surely cannot now be question of a ‘vaccine passport’ as some MP (Tobias Ellwood, since you ask) thought would be needed. Let’s also leave aside the disturbing aspect of turning the older population into vaccine guinea pigs – this is the disturbing point: who is this Ms Bingahm?

Who gave her this ‘chair’ of yet another ‘task force’? Isn’t this yet another sign that we’re governed by unelected quangocrats while ‘teh government’, in the form of BJ and Hancock, issue PR statement after PR statement? Why do I find Ms Bingham’s next remark not even remotely reassuring:

“Ms Bingham explains each treatment is likely to require a patient to have two doses, which is why orders of 60 million doses have been placed with manufacturers – enough for 30 million people.” (link)

I certainly had no idea that “we” have 30 million ‘vulnerable’ people living in our country, even when including all those ‘health workers’ in ‘Our NHS’. Even worse is this:

“Mr Hancock also backed up the remarks by the chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, and insisted any vaccine would be rolled out based on clinical needs.” (link)

Does Hancock regard age as defining ‘a clinical’ need? There’s more, and reassuring it is not! See this:

 He said: “The plans are in train. A combination of the NHS and the armed forces are involved in the logistics of making this happen, making the rollout happen.” (link)

Combining the Armed Forces with the ‘forces’ of ‘Our NHS’ – is that meant to make us feel safer? However, please don’t worry your pretty little heads about this: the army will only ‘help’ with the logistics, something they’re certainly better at than ‘Our NHS’ or Hancock’s empire of health quangos. Hancock himself though cannot resist the limelight, no matter how hapless and idiotiac he makes himself look:

“[He said] he hoped that “the cavalry are coming” in the form of a successful vaccine but warned the rest of the year would be difficult until it became available. The NHS will be split into “green sites and blue sites” this winter to ensure that patients could still be treated in Covid-free hospitals,[…]. Scientists and ministers are optimistic that a mass vaccination programme could be completed well within six months of a jab winning regulatory approval.” (paywalled link)

You really couldn’t make this up: ‘cavalry coming’? ‘Covid-free hospitals’? Gosh – aren’t we lucky, especially when you look at the time-scale when that vaccine cavalry will come riding over the horizon: six months after ‘approval’! That would be in summer next year – if approval is gained by the end of this year. 

Yes – words fail me, especially when I saw this morning’s other covid news which surely must lead to questions asked in the House! It’s the news that over 15,000 ‘test cases’ had been lost since September – ‘because of a computer blunder’ – so now they Covid authorities just added them to their scare tally:

“The UK recorded as many as 22,961 coronavirus cases last night because of a technical blunder that meant several thousand positive cases over the past two weeks went unrecorded. About 15,000 cases of coronavirus between September 25 and October 2 were not included in the daily reported cases because of a “technical difficulty” and had to be counted retrospectively. The majority of these cases occurred recently, according to Public Health England.” (link, paywalled)

Good grief! How trustworthy are those scare ‘case numbers’ if PHE (yes, it’s them again!) can just add test numbers retrospectively? Next, savour this:

“Officials said a “technical glitch” meant many of the cases had actually occurred the previous week, yet only been added to the statistics belatedly. The fiasco meant almost 16,000 positive cases became “stalled” in the system – and their details were not passed on to Test and Trace call handlers. As a result, tens of thousands of their close contacts are only being reached now, meaning that many of them could have been unknowingly carrying the virus.” (paywalled link)

Gawd – all those ‘untraced’ close contacts: they could have been ‘infected’! Yes, let’s be even more afraid! But never mind, the hard-working tracers are ‘on the case’:

At 1am on Sunday, health officials embarked on desperate attempts to trace contacts of positive cases, some of which date back 10 days, as they involve those who tested positive between Sept 24 and Oct 1. The NHS test and trace app was launched on Sept 24.” (paywalled link)

Did any ‘global health and science editor’ ask if there was a rise in hospitalisation? If not, why not, given that thousands of ‘infected’ people must have been roaming the streets and towns, spreading that virus? Why is nobody asking if it’s not time to scrap those Lockdown measures we’ve been subjected to, at least in order to save the economy? The arrogance of the various quangocrats and mandarins is as breathtaking as their ignorance about getting valid (not made-up) numbers: 

“Health officials said the problem – described by the Prime Minister as a “computing issue” – meant that cases in future days would also include cases which occurred between Sept 24 and Oct 1. The NHS test and trace app was launched on Sept 24.” (paywalled link)

So adding these ‘lost’ cases to future numbers is perfectly ok: it increases the ‘Covid Scare’ value. Never mind that this makes a joke of these ‘case numbers’ – who can trust them now? Note that this doesn’t even address the point of false positive tests which more and more scientists are talking about.

It’s of course totally inconceivable that ‘Our MSM’, in the face of these untrustworthy case numbers’, would question the need for the current lockdown measures – after all, they’re meant to keep us unruly plebs under control, Covid or not. Here is how another quangocrat involved is spinning this issue:

“Susan Hopkins, Test and Trace and PHE Joint Medical Adviser, said: “Our analysis now shows that this issue affected a total of 15,841 cases … with the majority occurring in recent days. This means the total number of positive cases over this period was higher than previously reported. Of these, over 75pc (11,968) relate to cases that should have been reported between Sept 30 and Oct 2. This issue did not affect people receiving their Covid-19 test results and all people who tested positive have received their Covid-19 test result in the normal way.” (paywalled link)

In ordinary English this means: it’s worse that you think – but not really as bad as all that. After all, the testees were told their results and no infected people are roaming the pubs, schools and restaurants! Yes – our ‘betters’, our unelected rulers, know what they’re doing! Basically,  this sort of thing is just a forgettable blip, just as the Met Police ‘losing’ evidence is simply an unfortunate thing:

“The Met said that it could not provide details about what had been lost or how it had gone missing because the information is not stored in an easily accessible way. It declined to say whether initiatives were in place to reduce the amount of evidence lost by police staff.” (link, paywalled)

To cheer us all up there was one piece of welcome news reported in the DT’s Sunday edition:

“Sir John Holmes [chair of ElCom] is understood to have been told by MPs that he cannot continue in the role – after seeking to extend his four-year term beyond December. The Electoral Commission is also now shelving plans to acquire powers to prosecute scores of criminal offences itself, rather than referring suspected breaches to the police and Crown ­Prosecution Service.” (paywalled link)

RemainCentral, in their usual ‘MeToo’ copy&paste‘ exercise, is of course aghast, reporting this under the shocking headline “Tories force out elections watchdog chief Sir John Holmes” (link, paywalled) – good grief! “Tories” were angry about the ElCom chair, and that ElCom was planning to prosecute ‘offences’ itself? Surely ElCom was perfectly entitled to do so, given the impeccable Westminster-Cabal pedigree of their members!

I leave you with this other news item which caught my eyes, again from the Sunday DT:

“In the clearest public signal of intent yet of the Government’s plans for a radical overhaul the system, Lord Agnew described Whitehall as “the most overcentralised bureaucracy in the Western world”, in which the “overwhelming majority” of civil servants were “urban metropolitan thinkers”. (paywalled link)

Will wonders never cease? Apparently he’s not alone in this assessment – here’s more:

“Baroness Finn, another Tory peer who sits on the board of the Cabinet Office, warned of a culture which resulted in civil servants being “rewarded for observing the status quo” rather than working out “better ways of doing things”. Lord Agnew […] warned of “big gaps” in the civil service, including “over a billion pounds of IT contracts that have overrun their expiration dates” and had not been renegotiated.” (paywalled link)

Ah! Is that the reason for ‘computer sez no’ – or yes, depending on what Whitehall mandarins require in order to deprive us of our civil liberties? For example because they ‘only’ want to ‘save our lives’ – sorry ‘Our Sacred Cow’? Never mind the billion ££ of useless IT contracts – that’s only our, the taxpayers’ money …

 

KBO!

 

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