I came from a house with an outside toilet in Listerhills in Bradford - both my parents were nurses in the 60s they weren't earning much - I was very lucky to get a scholarship to Bradford Grammer School parental encouragement helped - the rest as they say is down to myself, hardwork and a great deal of luck.

Unlike Ghost who did grow up middle class suburbia - went to uni, has a nice cushy job in the public sector never taken a risk or employed anybody using his own money - I know what its like for many people to rely on the decisions I make for the money to feed their family. Unlike you who simply talks the talk and has never walked the walk - complete empty jacket

LOL, poor Sal.



I've never worked in the public sector, the remuneration tends not to be as good as private.
But unlike you I am not a crazed ideologue who can't empathise with people who have different experiences to me, I don't presume that people with different jobs to me are inferior, I don't assume everyone else is lazy and I don't look at my own life and fail to recognise that fortune and circumstance has helped me along the way.

How compelling do y’all find these data? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793824/

How compelling do y’all find these data? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793824/

Local test and trace teams reaching 97.7% of contacts in England
the data shows local health protection teams are reaching far more close contacts of people who tested positive for coronavirus than those handled online or by call centres.
For cases handled by local health protection teams, 97.7% of contacts were reached and asked to self-isolate. For cases handled either online or by call centres, 57.6% of close contacts were reached.
Overall in the week ending October 7, a total of 216,627 people were identified as having come into contact with someone who tested positive and some 62.6% of contacts were reached.
This is the lowest weekly percentage since test and trace began, and is down from 69.5% in the previous week.

Just imagine how much local track and trace could have achieved given half of the money SERCO were given. Just imagine how much better the rate of Covid with and the economy might have been if we had used the last 6 months to develop a system to prevent the spread of Covid.

Manchester have asked for £20 million pounds for them to set up a local track and trace system.

Where will that sort of money come from ?


Maybe from the 1000 advisors being paid by SERCO £1950 per day . In 10,days with that money they could fund Manchester’s track and trace.

So are we saying 200k people a week need to self isolate for 14 days - so approx 400k at any one time?

It's more than likely double that figure.

Bearing in mind that until/unless a vaccine is found, all of us are going to be infected at one time or another.

And everyone wonders why track and trace wont work - 200k a week - say it takes 30 minutes a call that's 100k hours of calls a week if you can contact each person quickly. That's a big number

True. You can add to that the fact that the three main sites, Collindale, Manchester and Porton Down don't really get on with each other or coordinate particularly well.

It won't work now, but four months ago it would have, and we probably wouldn't now be looking at this dreadful scale of infection rise. It's a 35 million pound clusterf***. Not only did they set it up on an Excel spreadsheet (totally unbelievable) but they used the spreadsheet the wrong way around.

If you want to believe everything you read, that is. But what would The Sin bin without all the left wing bias.

Multiple threads, all about how useless the government are, not a single mention of the Labour 'plan' or Crignebins brother evoking hate and anti establishment gatherings....

I'd completely missed the bit where Labour won the election and we had their record in power to judge them by.
Distraction and whataboutery - this is all the hard right have left to cling to.

I think IR80 has a new username, folks.

Well there’s probably a good reason why we we can’t judge Labours record in power - and in all honesty with the current balls up of Covid & Brexit you’d still hardly know they exist

I would suggest you watch the many PMQ’s between Johnson and Starmer or the debate between Johnson and Miliband this year and you may realise that they do exist and find it rather easy to make the PM look clueless and irrelevant. The polls also show more people support Labour than the Cons and that Starmer is a better leader.
I wonder how many of the new red wall Conservatives will be voted back in next time, judging by how twitchy they have become they are already beginning to wonder if Johnson is the right man
How many of those impacted by Covid wished that Labour was in power. The private companies making millions won’t of course because they can just carry on milking the tax payer for as much as possible with the full backing of the Cons especially one minister.

More left wing delusion and lies.

They are leading in the polls because of the “failings” of the tories not because of anything they are doing themsleves- and if Starmer can’t win a debate coming from his previous role, where just he gets facts and figures together then there is no hope for him - it doesn’t make him a great political leader. I’ve just listened to Lisa Nandy who represents my neck of the woods, all criticism but no answers.

Good Lord yes - how I wish Corbyn was the leader during this pandemic

It would be funny watching him discuss with his Covidiot brother!

Lisa Nandy was on the today programme this morning talking about the £60m - she said at 4:30 the £60m was off the table but miraculously appeared overnight. Hancock said at 7pm yesterday in parliament that the £60m was still on the table. She failed to admit that this was the case - this is a leading shadow minister!!

Was it not Johnson who said it wasn’t despite being given many opportunities to do so. I suppose like many times in the past another minister needs to correct the confusion unnecessarily caused by his lack of preparation.

Was it not Johnson who said what wasn't?

At a time when we have needed urgent action by governments I'd rather take my chances with a party which believed in the power of government to do things rather than one which throws billions away to either their friends or to companies which specialise in profiteering from bloated government contracts.

And at a time when understanding and interpreting the science is critical, I'd rather not take my chances with a party which has a strong recent history of science denial.

It's no coincidence that the results in countries with hard right populist wannabe strong men in power have seen the worst results during this.

The problem is the science isn't clear - and you can't ignore the economic impact - this isn't China.

The public sector has thrown billions away on many projects e.g. The NHS computerisation of records being one so its not a public vs private. Track and trace only works if you get total buy in from the public - we know in this country it will not happen unless it is forced which we all know wont happen.

Hilarious again Sal, China's economy is one of the fastest growing economies on the planet. I dont think that you can suggest that they ignore economic impact.
As for throwing money away, our current government are exceeding in this area, plunging the country's debt to unprecedented peace time levels.
As for the public "buying in" to track and trace, perhaps if we'd had a "World Beating" system, not only would the public have bought into it but, it might have actually worked ??

More bleating, no answers, you should become a local councillor on a sink estate, you'd fit right in.