7 ms·

> The US technology company was awarded a £330 million contract in 2023 to collate operational data, including patient information and waiting lists. That cont

> The US technology company was awarded a £330 million contract in 2023 to collate operational data, including patient information and waiting lists. That contract value is ridiculous - how many full time staff do they have on this project and what rates are they charging? How can some say ‘operational data collection’ is worth a third of a billion to NHS over the alternatives of using a third of a billion on patient healthcare and actual medical research? This needs an investigation around how this contract was ever approved.

user3939382 7mo ago
I assume the purpose of Palantir is to enable the Federal government to circumvent the constitution by framing their new spy agency as a public/private partnership. From that lens the funding makes sense.
- imdsm 7mo ago
  There's no federal government in the UK, nor constitution
  - codeduck 7mo ago
    There is absolutely a Constitution in the UK, it is simply not codified into a single document. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin... More importantly, the UK is a Constitutional Monarchy, with ultimate legislative power vested in Parliament rather than the Monarch.
    - howerj 7mo ago
      I find it weird that people would downvote this, I know you should not complain about it, but this comment is correct. The UK does have a (uncodified) constitution. Also of note; even countries with a codified constitution have parts that are uncodified.
      - dataflow 7mo ago
        >> There is absolutely a Constitution in the UK, it is simply not codified into a single document. <link> That's got to be the understatement of (many) centuries. AFAIK the UK constitution isn't even even codified into millions of documents, let alone a "single" one. Saying it's not in a "single" document is like saying my trillions of dollars aren't in a "single" bank account. The number of partitions really isn't the problem with that statement here. Is there a single human (or even computer program) that could even definitively list all the sentences in this "constitution", let alone an arbitrary citizen who needs to be able to become aware of them to be able to follow them? (Note I'm not asking for interpretation, but literally just listing the sentences.) Could they even do this with infinite time? Is it even possible to have an oracle that, given an arbitrary sentence, could indisputably tell you if it is in the constitution? Maybe that's asking too much. Forget enumerating the laws. Per your own link: "...this enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched." If this doesn't itself sound silly, hopefully you can at least forgive people for getting irritated at the proposition that there totally exists a "constitution"... that nobody can point to... and that doesn't actually do the one thing many people want from a constitution: being more entrenched than statutes. > Also of note; even countries with a codified constitution have parts that are uncodified. Not sure what countries you're referring to, but at least in the US, this is not the case. There is a single document that is the constitution, and (thankfully, so far) nobody is disputing what words are in fact written on that document. And that document absolutely is supreme to statutes. Interpretation of the words is obviously left to courts in the US, and courts can interpret it differently changing the effective law, but "constitution" is not a synonym for "effective law", and nobody argues over what the words to be interpreted are. And even those interpretations are still written down!
        AlecSchueler 7mo ago
        > Is there a single human (or even computer program) that could even definitively list all the sentences in this "constitution" No, it's a living thing. Why is this your sticking point on the existence of a constitution or not?
        7mo ago
    - OJFord 7mo ago
      And that's absolutely not what the commenter up-thread meant.
    - istjohn 7mo ago
      From your link: "This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched." It doesn't look like a duck, it doesn't quack like a duck, yet you insist that this goose-shaped creature is a duck.
      - ponkpanda 7mo ago
        >It doesn't look like a duck Some special amendment procedure is not the only or even defining feature of constitutional law. There is non-constitutional law that has this property and there is constitutional law that does not.
        istjohn 7mo ago
        I notice you are using the phrase "constitutional law" now, where as the original question was whether the UK can be said to have "a constitution." The oddities of this "duck" go far beyond its lack of entrenchment. It also lacks form and definition in the way that a puff of smoke lacks form and definition. It includes such nebulous elements as common law, unwritten convention, and even legal commentary of various law scholars. It's also said to be in constant flux as it evolves over time. It may be a useful abstraction within the context of UK law to refer to this amorphous blob as the "constitution," but for anyone unfamiliar with the UK's system of government, to say the UK has a constitution is grossly misleading in as much as all of the conclusions the listener will draw from that assertion will be false. It's like characterizing a chicken eating grain out of your hand as being "attacked by a dinosaur." The chicken may belong to the clade "Dinosauria" and may have inadvertently pecked your palm in its feeding frenzy, but in as much as it communicates information contrary to fact, it is a confabulation. At best, it's a lawyer's lie, to coin a phrase.
      - FuriouslyAdrift 7mo ago
        I've heard it said that they have a constitution but it's written in pencil...
        istjohn 7mo ago
        ...in the air
  - Zigurd 7mo ago
    You are technically correct. But the distinction between devolution and a Federation of states gets very blurry when you take a look at what's happening with voting in the US these days. You are technically incorrect about the UK not having a constitution. It's just not all compiled into a single written document.
    - mrob 7mo ago
      Technically correct only if you accept "vague set of traditions" as a valid definition for "constitution". This both contradicts common usage and enables tyranny, so I recommend rejecting it.
      - rounce 7mo ago
        The UK constitution isn't a "vague set of traditions", it is spread across a number of acts of Parliament.
        mrob 7mo ago
        Where can I find the official list of which acts are part of the constitution? And what additional obstacles exist to changing those acts beyond the obstacles to changing non-constitutional acts of parliament? In common usage, a constitution is something that restricts changes to ordinary law. If a "constitution" is made entirely from ordinary law it cannot function as a constitution.
        Zigurd 7mo ago
        Before you demand more explanation on the spot, you know there's a Wikipedia page for that. It explains the components how they are legitimated and the mechanisms of the UK government that rely on it.
- mapt 7mo ago
  The purpose of Palantir is to watch over Mordor and the other lands of Sauron. He's only got one eye, one attention span, he needs intelligent agentic processing to administrate the realm. Who are you going to entrust, Gorthak The Orc? The Nazgul? They have their own priorities, their own limitations. It was incredibly expensive to run East Berlin as a panopticon state, with a large fraction of the population on the payroll as informers to the 100,000 Stasi agents. Obvious conclusions were missed all the time because of the sheer difficulty of keeping track of facts cross-referenced on paper in filing cabinets in a large office building. This volume of classified siloed information is toxic for the occupation, operationally unusable. People were disappeared or even executed on mere suspicion because it would have been too difficult to rustle up proof. Thiel looked at our prospects for effectively running an authoritarian surveillance state in Afghanistan and Iraq, looked at how many American contractors we would have had to devote to that, how many people we would have had to torture on a routine basis, how fast we might learn the language, and said "I think I can do better. A softer touch, a smarter system for controlling people. This is what AI is for, running society after this liberal democracy fiction falls away"
  - da_chicken 7mo ago
    NB: The Palantir were created by the Elves, not by Morgoth or Sauron. The problem is that it takes a lot of will to use one and not have things of importance hidden (it shows what you think is important, not what is important), and as it turns out holders of one stone can influence what holders of other stones can see, if their will is greater. The Enemy doesn't get ahold of a stone until Minas Ithil falls and becomes Minas Morgul, and that's well into the Third Age. Two thousand years after the Last Alliance of Men and Elves, the second defeat of The Enemy, and the first destruction of Sauron. Which is still a thousand years before the start of Frodo's adventure. Lots of time in Middle Earth. The rest of your comment is, unfortunately, spot on.
    - mindslight 7mo ago
      It's amazing how some people can read Tolkien's works and come away with an idea that it would be a good thing to create new powerful artifacts that will inevitably fall under the control of evil. Perhaps because their minds have already been corrupted by the One Ring. I suppose it's just the Don't make the Torment Nexus effect with a different motif.
timthorn 7mo ago
Partially redacted details here. The award was over 5 years for half that amount, but could be extended to 10. https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/0f8a65b5-23a2-4294-abb1-a7fd8efb3ad0 https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/0f8a65b5-2...
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
DaedalusII 7mo ago
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/apparently-the-nhs-is-the-worlds-largest-buyer-of-fax-machines https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/apparently-the-nhs-is-the-wor... https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/removing-faxes-practice-guide-v1.3.pdf https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/removi... nhs is famous dumb and has spent years trying to stop using fax machine. £330 million is nothing over a few years.. NHS budget for 2024/25 is circa £242 billion. the entire annual intake from capital gains tax is £20 million or so
- zipy124 7mo ago
  I think you mean £20 billion for that latter figure. This is largely because a significant amount of assets are held in ISA's (£20k a year contribution per person allowed) , or via personal property which is capital gains exempt or in a pension which is again, capital gains exempt. Thus only the wealthiest are outside these boundaries, and they often will not liquidate holdings until their death to pay inhertiance tax, or in trusts which will liqudiate over decades as they can pay inheritance tax over a very long period. This is not to mention the large amounts of off-shore holdings.
  - mgaunard 7mo ago
    Many people opt for off-shore bonds (which have a number of advantages) which means paying normal tax instead of capital gains, so the capital gains figure doesn't really capture investment as a whole.
  - DaedalusII 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - dmoy 7mo ago
      More like 40% effective tax rate at £100k, even including employer side of things?
    - exe34 7mo ago
      > paying 71% income tax Do you have a citation for this? I'm interested in how this figure was extracted from where it came.
mhh__ 7mo ago
The NHS is a huge organisation (~2 million employees alone) with enormous problems along these lines - they should pay 10x if it delivers.
- micromacrofoot 7mo ago
  as often the case with eternal consultants it probably won't deliver, plus the NHS will be perpetually on the hook for maintenance this isn't a "delivery" product, it should be an institutional pillar of the system
- RHSeeger 7mo ago
  But they'll pay even if it doesn't deliver. AND they're putting private information at risk by working with Panantir
  - basket_horse 7mo ago
    Isn’t this true for any project ever attempted? The only reason this project exists is because millions have already been wasted on trying to do this in house
    - RHSeeger 7mo ago
      Yes, but the comment I was replying to sounded like it was saying that the large cost wasn't an issue, because it would have such a big impact. But the odds of it actually accomplishing anything useful need to be taken into account, too. If it has a low chance of success, then a large price tag isn't worth it.
dwedge 7mo ago
This is why I disagree with the idea that we should keep increasing funding to the NHS. The argument always seems to come to a false dichotomy of "either this or the American system" as though other systems don't exist, and as though the NHS isn't top heavy with bureaucrats and questionable contracts
- mgaunard 7mo ago
  The truth is that the NHS is very bad not due to funding, but for structural reasons. The fact I can't even see a GP I'm not registered with (not even an option to pay extra) is ridiculous. You have absolutely no control over your health at all. With private, you get exactly what you want, whenever you want it.
  - shigawire 7mo ago
    With private, you get exactly what you want, whenever you want it... If you can afford it.
    - stvltvs 7mo ago
      Pending availability of specialists, willingness to travel, etc.
      - tracker1 7mo ago
        If you're in a major metro area it's generally not too bad.
    - dwedge 7mo ago
      Compared to the system of no access
      - IAmBroom 7mo ago
        Same system, for the not-wealthy.
  - 7mo ago
sandworm101 7mo ago
A system whereby millions of people seek services from thousands of potential providers, with a life-or-death need to track which services and products were delivered where and when ... ya. It is a billion-dollar data problem. But that is the cost for the luxury of being able to walk into any hospital in the country and expect them to know everything about your conditions at a moment's notice.
crimsoneer 7mo ago
I mean, for comparison, the UK Gov "Integrated Data Service" costed around £250m and delivered literally nothing. Building software for and integrating 200-ish NHS trusts, who generally have their own cloud/tech stack etc, is not actually super cheap.

user3939382 7mo ago

I assume the purpose of Palantir is to enable the Federal government to circumvent the constitution by framing their new spy agency as a public/private partnership. From that lens the funding makes sense.

imdsm 7mo ago
There's no federal government in the UK, nor constitution
- codeduck 7mo ago
  There is absolutely a Constitution in the UK, it is simply not codified into a single document. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin... More importantly, the UK is a Constitutional Monarchy, with ultimate legislative power vested in Parliament rather than the Monarch.
  - howerj 7mo ago
    I find it weird that people would downvote this, I know you should not complain about it, but this comment is correct. The UK does have a (uncodified) constitution. Also of note; even countries with a codified constitution have parts that are uncodified.
    - dataflow 7mo ago
      >> There is absolutely a Constitution in the UK, it is simply not codified into a single document. <link> That's got to be the understatement of (many) centuries. AFAIK the UK constitution isn't even even codified into millions of documents, let alone a "single" one. Saying it's not in a "single" document is like saying my trillions of dollars aren't in a "single" bank account. The number of partitions really isn't the problem with that statement here. Is there a single human (or even computer program) that could even definitively list all the sentences in this "constitution", let alone an arbitrary citizen who needs to be able to become aware of them to be able to follow them? (Note I'm not asking for interpretation, but literally just listing the sentences.) Could they even do this with infinite time? Is it even possible to have an oracle that, given an arbitrary sentence, could indisputably tell you if it is in the constitution? Maybe that's asking too much. Forget enumerating the laws. Per your own link: "...this enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched." If this doesn't itself sound silly, hopefully you can at least forgive people for getting irritated at the proposition that there totally exists a "constitution"... that nobody can point to... and that doesn't actually do the one thing many people want from a constitution: being more entrenched than statutes. > Also of note; even countries with a codified constitution have parts that are uncodified. Not sure what countries you're referring to, but at least in the US, this is not the case. There is a single document that is the constitution, and (thankfully, so far) nobody is disputing what words are in fact written on that document. And that document absolutely is supreme to statutes. Interpretation of the words is obviously left to courts in the US, and courts can interpret it differently changing the effective law, but "constitution" is not a synonym for "effective law", and nobody argues over what the words to be interpreted are. And even those interpretations are still written down!
      - AlecSchueler 7mo ago
        > Is there a single human (or even computer program) that could even definitively list all the sentences in this "constitution" No, it's a living thing. Why is this your sticking point on the existence of a constitution or not?
        7mo ago
  - OJFord 7mo ago
    And that's absolutely not what the commenter up-thread meant.
  - istjohn 7mo ago
    From your link: "This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched." It doesn't look like a duck, it doesn't quack like a duck, yet you insist that this goose-shaped creature is a duck.
    - ponkpanda 7mo ago
      >It doesn't look like a duck Some special amendment procedure is not the only or even defining feature of constitutional law. There is non-constitutional law that has this property and there is constitutional law that does not.
      - istjohn 7mo ago
        I notice you are using the phrase "constitutional law" now, where as the original question was whether the UK can be said to have "a constitution." The oddities of this "duck" go far beyond its lack of entrenchment. It also lacks form and definition in the way that a puff of smoke lacks form and definition. It includes such nebulous elements as common law, unwritten convention, and even legal commentary of various law scholars. It's also said to be in constant flux as it evolves over time. It may be a useful abstraction within the context of UK law to refer to this amorphous blob as the "constitution," but for anyone unfamiliar with the UK's system of government, to say the UK has a constitution is grossly misleading in as much as all of the conclusions the listener will draw from that assertion will be false. It's like characterizing a chicken eating grain out of your hand as being "attacked by a dinosaur." The chicken may belong to the clade "Dinosauria" and may have inadvertently pecked your palm in its feeding frenzy, but in as much as it communicates information contrary to fact, it is a confabulation. At best, it's a lawyer's lie, to coin a phrase.
    - FuriouslyAdrift 7mo ago
      I've heard it said that they have a constitution but it's written in pencil...
      - istjohn 7mo ago
        ...in the air
- Zigurd 7mo ago
  You are technically correct. But the distinction between devolution and a Federation of states gets very blurry when you take a look at what's happening with voting in the US these days. You are technically incorrect about the UK not having a constitution. It's just not all compiled into a single written document.
  - mrob 7mo ago
    Technically correct only if you accept "vague set of traditions" as a valid definition for "constitution". This both contradicts common usage and enables tyranny, so I recommend rejecting it.
    - rounce 7mo ago
      The UK constitution isn't a "vague set of traditions", it is spread across a number of acts of Parliament.
      - mrob 7mo ago
        Where can I find the official list of which acts are part of the constitution? And what additional obstacles exist to changing those acts beyond the obstacles to changing non-constitutional acts of parliament? In common usage, a constitution is something that restricts changes to ordinary law. If a "constitution" is made entirely from ordinary law it cannot function as a constitution.
        Zigurd 7mo ago
        Before you demand more explanation on the spot, you know there's a Wikipedia page for that. It explains the components how they are legitimated and the mechanisms of the UK government that rely on it.
mapt 7mo ago
The purpose of Palantir is to watch over Mordor and the other lands of Sauron. He's only got one eye, one attention span, he needs intelligent agentic processing to administrate the realm. Who are you going to entrust, Gorthak The Orc? The Nazgul? They have their own priorities, their own limitations. It was incredibly expensive to run East Berlin as a panopticon state, with a large fraction of the population on the payroll as informers to the 100,000 Stasi agents. Obvious conclusions were missed all the time because of the sheer difficulty of keeping track of facts cross-referenced on paper in filing cabinets in a large office building. This volume of classified siloed information is toxic for the occupation, operationally unusable. People were disappeared or even executed on mere suspicion because it would have been too difficult to rustle up proof. Thiel looked at our prospects for effectively running an authoritarian surveillance state in Afghanistan and Iraq, looked at how many American contractors we would have had to devote to that, how many people we would have had to torture on a routine basis, how fast we might learn the language, and said "I think I can do better. A softer touch, a smarter system for controlling people. This is what AI is for, running society after this liberal democracy fiction falls away"
- da_chicken 7mo ago
  NB: The Palantir were created by the Elves, not by Morgoth or Sauron. The problem is that it takes a lot of will to use one and not have things of importance hidden (it shows what you think is important, not what is important), and as it turns out holders of one stone can influence what holders of other stones can see, if their will is greater. The Enemy doesn't get ahold of a stone until Minas Ithil falls and becomes Minas Morgul, and that's well into the Third Age. Two thousand years after the Last Alliance of Men and Elves, the second defeat of The Enemy, and the first destruction of Sauron. Which is still a thousand years before the start of Frodo's adventure. Lots of time in Middle Earth. The rest of your comment is, unfortunately, spot on.
  - mindslight 7mo ago
    It's amazing how some people can read Tolkien's works and come away with an idea that it would be a good thing to create new powerful artifacts that will inevitably fall under the control of evil. Perhaps because their minds have already been corrupted by the One Ring. I suppose it's just the Don't make the Torment Nexus effect with a different motif.

timthorn 7mo ago

Partially redacted details here. The award was over 5 years for half that amount, but could be extended to 10. https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/0f8a65b5-23a2-4294-abb1-a7fd8efb3ad0 https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/0f8a65b5-2...

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

DaedalusII 7mo ago

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/apparently-the-nhs-is-the-worlds-largest-buyer-of-fax-machines https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/apparently-the-nhs-is-the-wor... https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/removing-faxes-practice-guide-v1.3.pdf https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/removi... nhs is famous dumb and has spent years trying to stop using fax machine. £330 million is nothing over a few years.. NHS budget for 2024/25 is circa £242 billion. the entire annual intake from capital gains tax is £20 million or so

zipy124 7mo ago
I think you mean £20 billion for that latter figure. This is largely because a significant amount of assets are held in ISA's (£20k a year contribution per person allowed) , or via personal property which is capital gains exempt or in a pension which is again, capital gains exempt. Thus only the wealthiest are outside these boundaries, and they often will not liquidate holdings until their death to pay inhertiance tax, or in trusts which will liqudiate over decades as they can pay inheritance tax over a very long period. This is not to mention the large amounts of off-shore holdings.
- mgaunard 7mo ago
  Many people opt for off-shore bonds (which have a number of advantages) which means paying normal tax instead of capital gains, so the capital gains figure doesn't really capture investment as a whole.
- DaedalusII 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - dmoy 7mo ago
    More like 40% effective tax rate at £100k, even including employer side of things?
  - exe34 7mo ago
    > paying 71% income tax Do you have a citation for this? I'm interested in how this figure was extracted from where it came.

mhh__ 7mo ago

The NHS is a huge organisation (~2 million employees alone) with enormous problems along these lines - they should pay 10x if it delivers.

micromacrofoot 7mo ago
as often the case with eternal consultants it probably won't deliver, plus the NHS will be perpetually on the hook for maintenance this isn't a "delivery" product, it should be an institutional pillar of the system
RHSeeger 7mo ago
But they'll pay even if it doesn't deliver. AND they're putting private information at risk by working with Panantir
- basket_horse 7mo ago
  Isn’t this true for any project ever attempted? The only reason this project exists is because millions have already been wasted on trying to do this in house
  - RHSeeger 7mo ago
    Yes, but the comment I was replying to sounded like it was saying that the large cost wasn't an issue, because it would have such a big impact. But the odds of it actually accomplishing anything useful need to be taken into account, too. If it has a low chance of success, then a large price tag isn't worth it.

dwedge 7mo ago

This is why I disagree with the idea that we should keep increasing funding to the NHS. The argument always seems to come to a false dichotomy of "either this or the American system" as though other systems don't exist, and as though the NHS isn't top heavy with bureaucrats and questionable contracts

mgaunard 7mo ago
The truth is that the NHS is very bad not due to funding, but for structural reasons. The fact I can't even see a GP I'm not registered with (not even an option to pay extra) is ridiculous. You have absolutely no control over your health at all. With private, you get exactly what you want, whenever you want it.
- shigawire 7mo ago
  With private, you get exactly what you want, whenever you want it... If you can afford it.
  - stvltvs 7mo ago
    Pending availability of specialists, willingness to travel, etc.
    - tracker1 7mo ago
      If you're in a major metro area it's generally not too bad.
  - dwedge 7mo ago
    Compared to the system of no access
    - IAmBroom 7mo ago
      Same system, for the not-wealthy.
- 7mo ago

sandworm101 7mo ago

A system whereby millions of people seek services from thousands of potential providers, with a life-or-death need to track which services and products were delivered where and when ... ya. It is a billion-dollar data problem. But that is the cost for the luxury of being able to walk into any hospital in the country and expect them to know everything about your conditions at a moment's notice.

crimsoneer 7mo ago

I mean, for comparison, the UK Gov "Integrated Data Service" costed around £250m and delivered literally nothing. Building software for and integrating 200-ish NHS trusts, who generally have their own cloud/tech stack etc, is not actually super cheap.