General Election 2024: Gone on the 4th of July

[randomlegend]

The mongs criticising the government for over-ordering protective equipment, and the costs of storing it, are the same people who spent the opening phase of the pandemic calling them incompetent for not having had an emergency stockpile ready to go.

As far as I can tell, the reason they've wasted so much money on PPE is precisely because they didn't have any stockpiled nor any plans.

The pandemic meant they suddenly needed loads of PPE they didn't have. The rest of the world also needed loads of PPE. This companies could charge whatever the liked for it. The lack of planning meant they had no idea how much they actually needed or how much of what they ordered would end up being supplied, so they massively overshot.

No planning and no stockpiles = panic buying huge amounts of overpriced PPE.

[niko_cee]

There are multiple layers to the story.

1. Nurse realises how dreadful NHS procurement is and so sets up a company to supply the NHS/exploit that 'problem' [good old $50 loaves of bread on prescription etc] and does pretty well out of it.

2. Pandemic comes along and everyone loses their mind. Is it too much to ask for something in between letting everyone die and spending god knows how many billions on nothing? They offshore the company for 'privacy reasons' aka so as to conceal the insane margins they would have made on these deals. If the government wants to slide me the best part of a billion quid then I'll happily pay tax on it as if it were income with a totally clear conscience. :/

[Pepe]

I reckon that keeping a stockpile would be far more expensive, or "wasteful", than panic buying was.

[niko_cee]

Particularly seeing as it 'goes off' every three years or something, so you'd need to be constantly buying it, albeit at much lower costs, presumably.

[Yevrah]

I reckon that keeping a stockpile would be far more expensive, or "wasteful", than panic buying was.

I wondered whether this would actually be the case. I mean, we haven't had a pandemic for 100 years, presumably this stuff has a shelf life (both in terms of how long it lasts and how quickly it's superseded) and then you have to store the fucking stuff.

It's incredibly lazy to accuse the government of wasting shitloads of money without looking into the above and clearly these companies were able to charge what they liked as everyone was caught with their pants down - it wasn't just us.

[Yevrah]

Particularly seeing as it 'goes off' every three years or something, so you'd need to be constantly buying it, albeit at much lower costs, presumably.

If it actually is three years then there's not a chance in hell was it worth stockpiling.

[niko_cee]

From the story:

“It had either a two- or three-year shelf life. This means the PPE products are more likely to have passed their use-by date.”

[Pepe]

My favorite part is the use of 'nurse salary' as currency.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said the money lost "could have been used to pay the salaries of 37,000 nurses"

Great, and none of them would've had a mask and therefore they would all refuse to work.

[Lewis]

As far as I can tell, the reason they've wasted so much money on PPE is precisely because they didn't have any stockpiled nor any plans.

The pandemic meant they suddenly needed loads of PPE they didn't have. The rest of the world also needed loads of PPE. This companies could charge whatever the liked for it. The lack of planning meant they had no idea how much they actually needed or how much of what they ordered would end up being supplied, so they massively overshot.

No planning and no stockpiles = panic buying huge amounts of overpriced PPE.

This was every country because keeping a stockpile costs a lot of money. The contract was signed in April 2020, so would you have advised them against buying too much of it had you been in the room?

[niko_cee]

There's too much of it, and then there's face masks and aprons for every person on the planet.

[igor_balis]

Lewis, have you always been this contrarian? The guardian could publish an article saying "cooking and eating Albanians is bad" and you'd be posting your eye rolling emoji and saying "the same people moaning about this were whining about food poverty but now they're being provided delicious Balkan meat they're complaining"

[niko_cee]

I see some Labour bod has got in on the betting scandal by ostensibly betting against themselves.



I respect that.

Hopefully his stake was a few years' MP salary.

[Ben]

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/orderedseats.html

Almost certainly a load of bollocks but fascinating reading nonetheless. According to this CON don't have a single seat with a greater than 50% chance of winning, and even their three safest seats before this election campaign are predicted to go Liberal. CON predicted to gain no seats, hold just 76, and 10 of those have a majority of under 1% so could easily slip away if they have another gaffe in them. 50-99 seats now big odds on with the bookies and LD down to 3/1 to be the Opposition. Jim might be right.

[niko_cee]

Thangham Debbonaire predicted to lose to the greens on that.



I mean, what sort of name is that for a Labour politician? Or has she been parachuted elsewhere?

[Ben]

Nope, she's standing in Bristol still. Bristol just being Bristol probably.

[Ben]

Also, I've noticed Reform have got a shitload of marketing material out there. Who is funding them in this election? Last I saw they were relying on Tice's wallet and it wasn't limitless.

[niko_cee]

George Soros, Vladimir Putin and Don Quixote.

[Lofty]

The problem is there is a significant amount of people who will vote for banter options because politics is boring. My in laws voted for Boris along these lines but then never linked the whole country in shambles to it. Also a basic failure of understanding the system in this country, as per a conversation at the weekend 'I'm going to vote Farage', 'I didn't realise Reform were running a candidate in your constituency.' 'Huh?'

[7om]

If I were to place a bet, I reckon Conservatives will do better than the polls. I really wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up with 110 seats.

[Ben]

Ladbrokes have Under 99.5 at 8/13. FT reckon 101 seats but that seems to drop with every passing day.

90-100 range seems most likely at the moment to me. If you fancy 110, you could make a few quid taking on Ladbrokes (100-149 is at 9/4 currently).

[Luke Emia]

Labour now have a 68% chance of winning round here by the looks of things. Truss is down to 28%, time to suck it up and vote red for the first time ever to get rid of her once and for all.

[niko_cee]

Reservoir Dogs 2 rumoured.

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[Baz]

My betting group have gone absolutely balls deep in Reform to get 7+ seats at 7/4. Is this something I should be getting my wages involved in?

[Ben]

Everything I’m seeing puts them more around the 3-5 seats region.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I'd be astonished if they got 7. I'll be moderately surprised if they get 2. They seem to be in play in a couple of Essex seats and Anderson's.

[Spikey M]

They'll get Clacton. That's about it.

They will get a respectable %age of the vote though. It just means fuck all in our faux democracy.

[niko_cee]

The term you're looking for is representative democracy.

[phonics]

This is top of the definitely never happened list. Even the name Margaret makes it reek of made upness.

[Ben]

I'd be astonished if they got 7. I'll be moderately surprised if they get 2. They seem to be in play in a couple of Essex seats and Anderson's.

They seem quite popular in that weird East Lincs region so maybe there's a seat or two there.

[Baz]

So you’re saying to limit myself to £250?

[Lofty]

This is top of the definitely never happened list. Even the name Margaret makes it reek of made upness.

The Guardian? They print any old shit, look at all the bollocks Jack Monroe made up for them without question over the years.

I suppose if you are annoyed with the tories/are racist but really hate Starmer then Farage is your man.

I've said it before and I'll say it again but there are a lot of casually racist Tory voters and they would have been iffy about Sunak without the disasterclass, the members picked Truss over him ffs.

[niko_cee]

Channel 4 did a really weird AI stealing your votes programme last night which I couldn't really get my head around. They seemed to show a bunch of obviously already decided voters obviously false 'AI generated' propaganda stuff, which they appeared to be required to consume in a vacuum, with no resort to critical thinking, with the conclusion being IT REALLY MAKES YOU THINK when they all followed the AI with their votes. It was odd. Has social media actually destroyed brains? Are the true, or perhaps only the early born-in-the-1980s millenials the only generation that has any hope against it?

[niko_cee]

Just had the local Labour candidate knocking on doors. He seemed pleased as my wife has put up Labour posters to alienate all the oldies who live around here/are all our neighbours. He's the first one I've seen so I'll probably vote for him. Accused the, according to electoral calculus hot favourite, Lib Dem of having a Joe Biden level performance at the local hustings, which I thought was quite funny. He is old.

[Luke Emia]

Yeah we had someone door knocking for one of the independent candidates the other day. She seemed somewhat put out when I advised her I would be voting for whoever had the best chance of beating Truss(although good I really do hope she door knocks in the village as her constituency house is only down the road).

We also got a leaflet through for the Communist Party. Now, far be it for me to tell them where to stand but seeing as they are only standing 14 candidates throughout the UK and this was one of the highest voting areas and most right wing areas in the whole country I cannot see standing here is the best use of their resources.

[Ben]

Nobody round here yet. The incumbent Tory isn’t wasting his time evidently as it looks like he is one and gone, and as a result likewise the Labour candidate isn’t bothering because they’re going to win either way. We don’t really attract fringe parties here.

[Spikey M]

I had some Jehovah's the other day. First time since about 2006. Apparently god allows suffering because Eve ate that apple. Now, you might recall that god omniraped Mary, to create a baby of himself, and then spent 30 odd years manipulating the Romans into nailing him to a cross so that he could forgive us? Well, no. It wasn't fucking good enough. Suffer scum.

Still, between them and the Tories...

[phonics]

As a printer it was fun to have the local Labour MP ask us for a quote for his materials, be told we're too expensive and he'd be going elsewhere. The issue being any printed material is mandated to name the company and address that printed it. So our Labour MP that proudly states that he's standing to 'support local businesses in Worcester' has the address of an online printer thats based in Holland and listed on the NASDAQ not even the FTSE.

[niko_cee]

Not sure Eve was Jesus' mum but let's go with it, why not. I hope you said that to them and it left them really confused.

[Shindig]

Eve was created from Adam's rib or something. All life stems from a man fucking his clone.

[Spikey M]

Mary ffs.

But no. I didn't say that to them. I said "I'm working at the moment, sorry." took the leaflet, and read it while sitting through Teams meeting on Service Charge calculations.

[phonics]

I had some Jehovah's the other day. First time since about 2006. Apparently god allows suffering because Eve ate that apple. Now, you might recall that god omniraped Eve, to create a baby of himself, and then spent 30 odd years manipulating the Romans into nailing him to a cross so that he could forgive us? Well, no. It wasn't fucking good enough. Suffer scum.

Still, between them and the Tories...

I think you may have confused the Bible with Greek Mythology somewhere.

Not to 'needless to say I had the last laugh' but any mention of Jehovahs Witnesses leads me to a memory when I was 14/15. Smoking a cigarette waiting for the bus. An American Jehovah said 'Aren't you a little young for that?' and I immediately came back with 'Aren't you a little old for that?' gesturing towards all his bible basher gear. I felt on top of the world for a week.

[Lewis]

Lewis, have you always been this contrarian? The guardian could publish an article saying "cooking and eating Albanians is bad" and you'd be posting your eye rolling emoji and saying "the same people moaning about this were whining about food poverty but now they're being provided delicious Balkan meat they're complaining"

I don't think 'contrarian' is the word. I'm always calling the government shit for various things, but there are obvious and sensible reasons why we never had any protective equipment stockpiled, we ended up with loads of it, and now we aren't keeping a stockpile of it. If your belief that the government was somehow uniquely useless in all of this prevents you from recognising that then what can you say?

[Manc]

I've had all the leaflets posted today. Tories are promising £2.5 billion for a new transport network. Vote secured.

[Lofty]

My local tory MP has sent a leaflet through saying she is going to reopen a rail station and reckons she is going to get the buffers taken out at Ormskirk so Merseyrail trains can run all the way to Preston. Given my job is all about that stuff, I eagerly await any canvassers calling so I can outline all the ways that won't be happening.

[Lofty]

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[Lewis]

Are those boomer cringe merchants still going? Like a 'Let's Go Brandon' sticker on a log burner.

[niko_cee]

France ending up with a run off choice between the national front and some Hollande fronted communist alliance seems the logical end position of an electoral system specifically designed to thwart both of those parts of politics.

[Pepe]

Melenchon, not Hollande.

[niko_cee]

Nah, the new popular front, not France Unbowed.

[Pepe]

I think they are all together.