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The word "mismanagement" assumes it was meant to work. It wasn't. It was a bung to one of Cummings' mates to make an app to gather information on us, which didn

The word "mismanagement" assumes it was meant to work. It wasn't. It was a bung to one of Cummings' mates to make an app to gather information on us, which didn't work, because people knew who it was from and didn't trust it. It was never meant to work. Just like the track and trace call handlers they "employed" to do nothing with no training, not meant to work. It's all about syphoning money off to their mates and the Russians.

mathieuh 6y ago
I think you're getting downvoted by people who don't have the contextual information Boris has been sitting on a report into Russian influence and he is refusing to release it because apparently there's nothing in there. Dido Harding has links to the Tory party and was in charge of the Talk Talk data leak scandal, and has been put in charge of the track-and-trace programme in the UK. They have given all of our NHS data to Palantir for no observable gain to UK citizens. New corruption stories about the Tories are appearing almost daily in UK media. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/27/richard-desmond-housing-project-unlawfully-approved-robert-jenrick-isle-dogs-london-avoid-40m-hit https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/27/richard-des... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johnson-billionaire-Richard-Desmond-120m-property-scandal.html?ito=1490 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johns... https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-affront-to-democracy-cross-party-letter-2020-6?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummings-coronavirus-lockdown-trip-no-10-latest-a9529461.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummi... the above is just a selection. I don't believe Hanlon's razor applies to the Tories.
- Angostura 6y ago
  The poster is being downvoted because it’s wasn’t suppose to work’ is unsupported supposition. Even if the contract was awarded unfairly through the old boy’s network, the intention was still for it to work.
  - lnanek2 6y ago
    > the intention was still for it to work Not sure why you would think that. I've worked in government before and seen contracts awarded to companies that had no chance of completing them. The intention was invariably to line a friend's pockets and book lots of consulting hours.
    - alimw 6y ago
      Even with this perspective the original comment doesn't make sense since it also says the app was meant "to gather information on us".
- DanBC 6y ago
  > Dido Harding has links to the Tory party and was in charge of the Talk Talk data leak scandal, and has been put in charge of the track-and-trace programme in the UK. Some more context to this: England already has an excellent system for track and trace. Not for covid-19, we fucked that up. But for sexual health we have excellent work being done across the country by public health departments. These were split off from the NHS some time ago, and now they're funded by local authorities so they're struggling to cope with over a decade of austerity. But it's still a weird decision to not make use of that expertise and pull Harding in. Her work at NHS Improvement[1] is good, but she's had very little contact with public health work. [1] Now NHS England + Improvement
- tomp 6y ago
  No, I downvoted (and flagged) the comment because unsubstantiated conspiracy theories have no place on HN. The Russians? Seriously?? Haven’t we had enough of that with 3 years of Russiagate in the US? Haven’t Russian spies attempted to assassinate someone in the UK just recently? But no, obviously the UK PM is a Russian agent.
  - detaro 6y ago
    The parent poster is not claiming that "the UK PM is a Russian agent", please assume good faith. If the report contains something that makes Johnson or someone in his government look bad, holding it back makes him corrupt, not a Russian agent.
    - tomp 6y ago
      They’re claiming PM is siphoning off money to the Russians, implying common interest which is against the interest of the UK. “Russian agent” is the correct summary of that.
      - mathieuh 6y ago
        I didn't make any claims, I informed that the PM has a report into Russian influence and is refusing to release it. I didn't make any implications at all.
        tomp 6y ago
        Not you, your parent commenter.
        mathieuh 6y ago
        Ah, got confused sorry
        detaro 6y ago
        ah, made that mistake too...
- tweetle_beetle 6y ago
  Maybe "it didn't matter if it didn't work" is a better was of putting it. The UK's COVID-19 repsonse has been PR driven - a constant stream of headlines to fight public opinion fires, with a sprinkle of corruption thrown in where possible (there will be plenty more of this to find when the dust settles). None of this sounds like public health driven leadership to me: - Hancock's test target was miraculously hit - bending his own rules to boost the figures (and wasting thousands of testing kits in the process) - Dido Harding trumpeted as a tech heavyweight brought in to deliver a futuristic solution - despite famously claiming after her company's massive data breach "It wasn't encrypted, nor are you legally required to encrypt it. We have complied with all of our legal obligations in terms of storing of financial information.", and sitting on the board of the Cheltenham Festival which opened it's doors to 260,000 people just days before lockdown. - Dominic Cummings publicly supported by all senior government politicians for breaking the public health guidelines they created - Rebranding the coronavirus messaging without consulting the behaviourhal psychologists on the governement's own SAGE committee - resulting in unaccessible unactionable nonsense etc. etc.
nbevans 6y ago
Except none of that is actually true - they're just made up smears and conspiracies. Be careful what news sources you consume. The NHS "centralised" app would have worked and worked fine IF they could have made the Bluetooth feature it relied on work properly. But this was always going to be impossible given what every mobile app developer already knows about the platforms. Whilst the NHSX app did have some ingenious ideas in it - it was not enough to get around the platform limitations enough to provide a working solution.
- stuaxo 6y ago
  People were talking about the platform limitations right at the beginning, it was foolhardy to go forward with it. The only reason I can think they were pressing ahead was to collect all the extra data that this approach would have yielded (if it was actually going to work - which it wasn't).

mathieuh 6y ago

I think you're getting downvoted by people who don't have the contextual information Boris has been sitting on a report into Russian influence and he is refusing to release it because apparently there's nothing in there. Dido Harding has links to the Tory party and was in charge of the Talk Talk data leak scandal, and has been put in charge of the track-and-trace programme in the UK. They have given all of our NHS data to Palantir for no observable gain to UK citizens. New corruption stories about the Tories are appearing almost daily in UK media. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/27/richard-desmond-housing-project-unlawfully-approved-robert-jenrick-isle-dogs-london-avoid-40m-hit https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/27/richard-des... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johnson-billionaire-Richard-Desmond-120m-property-scandal.html?ito=1490 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8416475/Boris-Johns... https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-affront-to-democracy-cross-party-letter-2020-6?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-russia-report-... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummings-coronavirus-lockdown-trip-no-10-latest-a9529461.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummi... the above is just a selection. I don't believe Hanlon's razor applies to the Tories.

Angostura 6y ago
The poster is being downvoted because it’s wasn’t suppose to work’ is unsupported supposition. Even if the contract was awarded unfairly through the old boy’s network, the intention was still for it to work.
- lnanek2 6y ago
  > the intention was still for it to work Not sure why you would think that. I've worked in government before and seen contracts awarded to companies that had no chance of completing them. The intention was invariably to line a friend's pockets and book lots of consulting hours.
  - alimw 6y ago
    Even with this perspective the original comment doesn't make sense since it also says the app was meant "to gather information on us".
DanBC 6y ago
> Dido Harding has links to the Tory party and was in charge of the Talk Talk data leak scandal, and has been put in charge of the track-and-trace programme in the UK. Some more context to this: England already has an excellent system for track and trace. Not for covid-19, we fucked that up. But for sexual health we have excellent work being done across the country by public health departments. These were split off from the NHS some time ago, and now they're funded by local authorities so they're struggling to cope with over a decade of austerity. But it's still a weird decision to not make use of that expertise and pull Harding in. Her work at NHS Improvement[1] is good, but she's had very little contact with public health work. [1] Now NHS England + Improvement
tomp 6y ago
No, I downvoted (and flagged) the comment because unsubstantiated conspiracy theories have no place on HN. The Russians? Seriously?? Haven’t we had enough of that with 3 years of Russiagate in the US? Haven’t Russian spies attempted to assassinate someone in the UK just recently? But no, obviously the UK PM is a Russian agent.
- detaro 6y ago
  The parent poster is not claiming that "the UK PM is a Russian agent", please assume good faith. If the report contains something that makes Johnson or someone in his government look bad, holding it back makes him corrupt, not a Russian agent.
  - tomp 6y ago
    They’re claiming PM is siphoning off money to the Russians, implying common interest which is against the interest of the UK. “Russian agent” is the correct summary of that.
    - mathieuh 6y ago
      I didn't make any claims, I informed that the PM has a report into Russian influence and is refusing to release it. I didn't make any implications at all.
      - tomp 6y ago
        Not you, your parent commenter.
        mathieuh 6y ago
        Ah, got confused sorry
        detaro 6y ago
        ah, made that mistake too...
tweetle_beetle 6y ago
Maybe "it didn't matter if it didn't work" is a better was of putting it. The UK's COVID-19 repsonse has been PR driven - a constant stream of headlines to fight public opinion fires, with a sprinkle of corruption thrown in where possible (there will be plenty more of this to find when the dust settles). None of this sounds like public health driven leadership to me: - Hancock's test target was miraculously hit - bending his own rules to boost the figures (and wasting thousands of testing kits in the process) - Dido Harding trumpeted as a tech heavyweight brought in to deliver a futuristic solution - despite famously claiming after her company's massive data breach "It wasn't encrypted, nor are you legally required to encrypt it. We have complied with all of our legal obligations in terms of storing of financial information.", and sitting on the board of the Cheltenham Festival which opened it's doors to 260,000 people just days before lockdown. - Dominic Cummings publicly supported by all senior government politicians for breaking the public health guidelines they created - Rebranding the coronavirus messaging without consulting the behaviourhal psychologists on the governement's own SAGE committee - resulting in unaccessible unactionable nonsense etc. etc.

nbevans 6y ago

Except none of that is actually true - they're just made up smears and conspiracies. Be careful what news sources you consume. The NHS "centralised" app would have worked and worked fine IF they could have made the Bluetooth feature it relied on work properly. But this was always going to be impossible given what every mobile app developer already knows about the platforms. Whilst the NHSX app did have some ingenious ideas in it - it was not enough to get around the platform limitations enough to provide a working solution.

stuaxo 6y ago
People were talking about the platform limitations right at the beginning, it was foolhardy to go forward with it. The only reason I can think they were pressing ahead was to collect all the extra data that this approach would have yielded (if it was actually going to work - which it wasn't).