Nothing since Friday? We can't let the comment thread just get longer and longer, so I'm very grateful for the following heart-felt musings and hope it might serve as a peg to hang some further thoughts on:-
"I am so bored of cutting and pasting onto forms. In my kitchen.
The requirement to keep regurgitating the same information onto different forms is absolute insanity. There is no time to gather any new information, so we reconfigure previous information to fit the target. Meaningless and wearying drudgework.
Referrals: is it beyond the capability (yes) of our organisation to sort out an IT system which would enable a Probation Officer to generate a referral to another agency by pressing a button “create referral”?
MAPPA: Is it beyond the capability (yes) of our organisation to sort out an IT system which would enable a Probation Officer to hit a button to generate a MAPPA referral?
Covid. Staff in my area going down like flies: we are running out of staff. Which of course means those of us remaining have more and more contacts. Of course, some of this is down to track and trace, so people are rightly self isolating and then in the main returning, but some colleagues are very ill. It does feel incredibly fragile. As do I.
We are at the beck and call of a cruel and dysfunctional department, and dancing to the ever more neurotic tune of managers anxiety. If you have a great manager, then it is softened, but they are in increasingly short supply, as the prize of advancement goes to the neurotic micromanager and bully.
What we do is often quite basic and human and direct. Oh for the power to delete the endless parade of new initiatives and just use the millions invested to hand a bacon sarnie, some lodgings, and some optimism to our clients."
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/12/15/serco-g4s-may-be-excluded-from-government-contracts-under-new-proposals/
ReplyDeleteCorporate outsourcing giants Serco and G4S could be excluded from public sector contracts under new procurement proposals released by the Government today.
DeleteAfter 12 months of consultation, the Cabinet Office has released its green paper, ‘Transforming Public Procurement’, which sets out the reforms being considered for after the conclusion of the Brexit transition period on 1 January 2021.
Currently, the UK’s procurement rules – determining the process for awarding public sector work to private companies – are guided by EU regulations. The official uncoupling of the UK and EU therefore requires the development of a new regime.
The green paper, a first-stage proposal that invites feedback from relevant parties, sets out the Government’s direction of travel.
Notably, exclusion rules are proposed to bar firms from acquiring public sector work if they are deemed unsuitable. The Government proposes that “mandatory exclusion” should apply to firms convicted of fraud, for example.
Exclusion could also apply to companies that have signed up to a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) – whereby an organisation accepts responsibility for criminal behaviour and agrees to make a reparation, such as paying a financial penalty, instead of being criminally convicted.
Under these circumstances, contracting authorities – such as government departments or local councils – could exclude a company from procurements when appropriate, taking into account the proportionality of the decision and whether it would hamper negotiations to secure a DPA.
If these rules become legislation, they could have a direct impact on Serco and G4S, both of which have been hit with a DPA in recent years. As reported by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), in July 2019 Serco took “responsibility for three offences of fraud and two of false accounting arising from a scheme to dishonestly mislead the Ministry of Justice”.
The company attempted to hide the total profit it was making from a contract relating to the provision of an electronic tagging system. A subsidiary of Serco was ordered to pay a financial penalty of £19.2 million and the SFO’s £3.7 million investigative costs. The terms of the DPA apply for three years and involve periodic reports on compliance and ethics.
Security company G4S, meanwhile, was hit by a similar DPA in July, accepting responsibility for three offences of fraud for deceiving the Ministry of Justice about the full extent of the company’s profits from the department’s electronic tagging scheme. It agreed to pay a financial penalty of £38.5 million and the SFO’s full costs of £5.9 million.
Beyond this compensation, the DPAs may have a significant impact on the finances of the two companies. Both have been awarded Government contracts worth billions of pounds in recent years – indeed Serco describes itself as a “leading provider of public services” – which might now be in jeopardy. It is understood that companies would be placed on an exclusion list for three years before a review.
For its part, Serco has controversially been hired to work on the Government’s COVID-19 ‘Test and Trace’ programme, and has more recently been included in a £7.5 billion contract, along with 27 other suppliers, to provide “employment services” after the pandemic. Last January, it was announced that Serco had won the largest ever private sector contract from the Government – worth a whopping £1.9 billion – to manage more than 5,000 properties housing asylum seekers.
G4S, meanwhile, booked contracts worth £1.3 billion from the Government and public sector in 2012-2013 alone. Both firms have seen their financial performance improve as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic and an associated outpouring of public sector contracts.
G4S recorded an operating profit of £187 million in the six months to July, exceeding a previous estimate of £159 million, while Serco recorded a 400% increase in operating profit during the first half of 2020.
MAPPA systems are all over the place. Nobody knows what we should and should not record. Systems seem different in every office. IT systems could definitely be lots better for this. Referrals to other agencies are different since most have their own form so not really possible.
ReplyDeleteMany moons ago we had a system for referrals to outside agencies which involved a standard format of details that could be readily accessed, supplemented by information specifically tailored to the referral, e.g. housing, rehab, etc.
DeleteHow? Well we had appropriately qualified, skilled & experienced senior managers with the foresight to negotiate protocols & agreements with the various agencies such that they would accept our referrals, whether or not they had their own forms.
Bizarre that in the modern world, with all of the tools & technology, it takes far longer and involves so much replication of data.
What would Raymond Baxter have thought?
Thanks for keeping going.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there's a question to be asked about what referrals probation are being asked to take responsibility for making.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking particularly about mental health and addiction.
Probation has become a far more punitive organisation in recent years, it's not about assist, befriend and advise any longer, and the social Work ethos has been removed.
Im thinking that some of the refferals being made by probation belong to healthcare rather then criminal justice.
I find it very thought provoking that so many people with such a vast array of social problems are being channeled through a service that is no longer seen by many as a social problem solving agency.
The following article might add some flesh to the bones of the point I'm trying to make.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/prisoner-who-suffered-lifetime-abuse-19409690.amp
'Getafix
Latest mailout from Napo:-
ReplyDeleteDear Xxxxxxxxxxxx
An exciting new project from Napo - help us get it right!
Napo plans to launch a series of professional webinars (free to members) in the New Year. The first will be in run in conjunction with the Probation Journal. We also plan to extend these to non-members, particularly new starters in Probation, as part of a recruitment drive.
Would you help us to get this right by taking a couple of minutes to complete this QUICK survey into our members’ access to the platforms we will be using to host the events and the best timings.
We promise it won’t take more than a few minutes – just 5 QUICK questions in total.
Click the link below to take part in the survey – your views will be an enormous help.
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/QRHGQKG
Thanks for your help.
Annoesjka Valent, National Official TUO
Napo junk .
DeleteI'm not bored. I'm frightened. Colleagues are Covid positive. I'm old and compromised. My employers are not interested in me and consumed by a competition to win some imaginary race which requires me to attend an office and type imaginary stuff into a database nobody but assorted quality-bolloxy-careerists will ever read.
ReplyDeleteYes. That ethos is being snuffed out. I've met many a new recruit who joined up for the same reasons I did. But they are already looking to leave. Want to hang on to them. Dont blame them. I'm limping on towards my postponed retirement engaging with nothing that isn't mandatory. Swiping through the absolutely rubbish online mandatory training ...another boxes ticked in somebody's annual objectives
ReplyDeleteAnyone care to comment on the online training? Insulting and Z MORE time used up
ReplyDeleteSorry to interrupt but... Still no Frank?
ReplyDeleteAnyone see the data today?
More than 25,000 new cases & over 600 deaths.
“To protect you and your loved ones... Everybody in a Christmas bubble is responsible for taking clear steps to prevent catching and spreading the virus.”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/dec/16/david-oyelowo-nowhere-on-earth-has-been-better-at-covering-up-racism-than-great-britain
ReplyDelete"Britain might be more diverse than it used to be, Oyelowo says, but he’s not convinced it’s less racist. “My brother, who is a healthcare professional in the UK, was on the train not long after the Brexit decision and that exact phrase was used to him on the tube. ‘Go back to where you came from.’ So no one can tell me Brexit wasn’t at least in part about race.”
Even with Donald Trump in power, he would take the US over Britain. “Nowhere on earth has been better at covering up racism in my opinion than Great Britain. The thing I like about living in America is that racism comes at you head on. In the UK it sneaks up behind you. I constantly came up against the old boys’ network in the UK – this Oxbridge clique that I wasn’t a part of and felt patronised by."
Yes! Yes! Thank you 1925 and 123me...I've been wanting to have a rant about these ridiculous "mandatory" modules for ages. I actually did them all before and have been railroaded, forced, cajoled and screamed at to get them done AGAIN despite my protestations that I'd done them before and remembered their absolutely SHIT CONTENT...but no, I was assured these modules have been modified in response to staff feedback and were no dumbed down.
ReplyDeleteI was lied to...the modules on child protection, adult safeguarding and domestic violence were embarrassingly simple, embarrassingly dumbed down and lacked any form of academic or operational value. I felt like a school child doing "introduction to probation: pre GSCE level"
I noted with interest that only about 48% of staff were satisfied with training and development in the famous people's survey.
Can I ask everyone to access "my learning" and "rate" the mandatory modules and fill out a feedback form.
Good luck in America then.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/dec/17/uk-justice-system-treats-victims-of-like-bystanders
ReplyDelete"The report, The role and rights of victims of crime in adversarial criminal justice systems, states that the criminal justice system in England and Wales “is in a state of crisis”, with funding cuts hitting police, prosecution, prison and probation services, the courts and legal aid. Funding for justice was reduced by 24% in real terms between 2010 and 2019, it states."
https://victimscommissioner.org.uk/published-reviews/rights-of-victims-of-crime-report/
DeleteThe role and rights of victims of crime in adversarial criminal justice systems: Recommendations for reform in England & Wales
Jane Gordon, Alison Gordon - Sisters For Change
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55345452
ReplyDelete"Serco, one of the UK companies which runs the coronavirus test-and-trace scheme, has said it will award bonuses totalling £5m to its staff.
It said 50,000 workers would be given £100 each to recognise "the extraordinary efforts of our staff around the world during the pandemic".
Serco will also hand back £3m in furlough payments to the government and has returned £38m in deferred taxes.
The NHS Test and Trace programme has faced criticism over its effectiveness."
REUTERS - UK's test and trace contracts give outsourcer Serco a boost
DeleteSerco expects revenue of around 4.1 billion pounds ($5.57 billion) and underlying trading profit of about 165 million pounds in 2021 after lifting its 2020 outlook in October to 3.9 billion pounds revenue and 160-165 million pounds in underlying trading profit - a jump of as much as 37%
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8875131/Serco-boss-blasts-critics-Test-Trace-shambles.html
ReplyDelete"Under fire Serco chief executive Rupert Soames has launched a bitter attack on critics who he says have thrown 'vitriol' at his firm. He insists the Government's Test and Trace system is 'more world beating than a shambles'.
In an irate defence of Serco's involvement in the programme, launched in May to ramp up testing and locate those infected, Soames complains his firm has become a 'poster-ghoul' and says critics could have the same impact as the 'anti-vaxxer' conspiracy theorists opposed to vaccinations.
His strongly worded rebuke – in which he repeatedly lambasts Labour MPs – is likely to add fuel to the row over the Government's use of private contractors to combat the pandemic, particularly in the Test and Trace programme.
This month it emerged that more than 1,000 consultants from Deloitte are working on Test and Trace with day rates up to £2,360.
Soames, a grandson of Winston Churchill, is brother to the former Tory MP Sir Nicholas Soames. His wife Camilla is a Conservative donor. Health Minister Edward Argar is a former Serco lobbyist.
Another firm, Randox Laboratories, which pays former Cabinet Minister Owen Paterson as an adviser, received £133million for Covid-19 testing. Thousands of test kits had to be recalled. "
So Hancock has made his tier review statement and has again stated explicitly that the Xmas 'rules' will not be revised -
ReplyDelete"Responding to Labour's Jonathan Ashworth, Hancock says it is a matter of people's "personal responsibility" to hold Christmas gatherings in a way that is safe next week.
"I think that aspect of personal responsibility is important," he says, adding: "It's down to individuals, each and every one of us, to take responsibility for our actions."
What a twee concept for someone who has no sense of personal responsibility for anything he's done wrong; which, of course, he hasn't, or so he believes.
So, practitioners in probation-land, if that was a reality in our wonderful world-leading country, why is it you are supervising some 250,000 people who have demonstrated no sense of personal responsibility? And why is it there are a further 90,000 more serious breaches of such self-control languishing in our prison system?
So let's have a think... the R-number is the Govt's measure of transmissibility of the covid-19 virus.
*Last updated on Friday 11 December 2020:
*Latest R-number range for the UK = 0.9-1.0
So we have a significant number of people with proven lack of self-control who will readily spread the infection by not taking responsibility.
And there are plenty of others with similar self-control issues - most of the Westminster bubble comes to mind - who are not included in the probation supervisee population.
It won't take long for the virus to enjoy its own festive period.
In just one working week at R=0.9 transmission for a population of 250,000, the result is a vast spread:
1. 250,000 x 0.9 = 225,000 additional cases
2. 475,000 x 0.9 = 427,500 add.cases
3. 902,500 x 0.9 = 812,250 add.cases
4. 1,714,750 x 0.9 = 1,543,275 add.cases
5. 3,258,025 x 0.9 = 2,932,222 add.cases
Total +ve cases after 5 days = 6,190,248
If we use the ECDC figure for the UK of 8.9 deaths per 100,000, this alone represents a death toll of 551 over those five days.
The UK population is almost 67million, so we can multiply that figure by 11 to get a weekly death toll of some 6,000.
We're half-way to that figure after a recent lockdown, so its not fantastic to think 6,000 deaths a week could be a reality after the Xmas hug-fest.
The USA is a superb example of personal responsbility out-of-the-window when it comes to 'the holidays'. They are currently experiencing overwhelming hospitalisations & 3,000 deaths a day (and rising) after their Thanksgiving in November.
Most people, just like children & animals, like to be given boundaries to push against with clearly defined consequences.
Serco only gave out staff bonuses & handed back govt cash because of the pressures brought to bear by the consequences of bad publicity. Without that they would have pushed the boundaries of ehtics & acceptable practice to pocket as much cash as possible.
The CRCs behaved in exactly the same way. They SHOULD have honoured the JNCC EVR agreements but, because they could push the boundaries without consequences (aided & abetted by a willing govt & a toothless union), they stole 60% of the allocated payments. With impunity.
Sad to say this Xmas is going to be a disaster for so many families come 2021. And the blood is on the hands of the weasly fuckers in government who refuse to take responsibility but want to take the credit for anything & everything positive.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make.
DeleteAbsolutely it's about personal responsibility. We are adults, we shouldn't need the government to act as our parents and to treat us like children in order for us to make the right decisions.
You seem to be saying that because people commit crime it shows a lack of personal responsibility and therefore the entire country should be punished by being isolated from their families this Christmas.
Using your same logic, the whole population should be sent to prison on account of a small proportion of people committing crime.
12.50 - you've totally misunderstood what the R rating means. it's how many people one person infects in total, not every day. so a rating of 0.9 means the numbers would decrease overall, not rapidly increase as you've described.
Delete@18:52 - you're absolutely correct.
Delete@16:27 - my point is that *most* people need clear, authoritative structure (its what we've learned all our lives) & can't operate in a vacuum. While some people just can't effect any self-control. So Johnson's tactic of 'rules say this but guidance says that' is futile & dangerous.
Just look at what's happening in the USA where their President is simply ignoring the virus:
"Two people dying every hour in Los Angeles county as it sees ‘explosive surge’... In California, 5,000 new body bags are being distributed, 60 refrigerated trailers have been repurposed as makeshift morgues"
"US confirmed 247,403 new cases on Wednesday and 3,656 Americans died of the coronavirus in a single day"
The virus is 'enjoying' a resurgence worldwide, with major outbreaks in the West Bank, in the Netherlands, Poland, France, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Greece...
Here's another govt minister with no sense of shame or responsibility preparing to trash the hard-fought right to level-up the playing fields in the UK:
ReplyDelete"Labour has accused Liz Truss of setting an “appalling standard” on equality in government after it emerged that of more than 250 trade advisers she has appointed, fewer than a quarter are women, and 95% are white.
The analysis comes before Truss, who is minister for women and equalities as well as international trade secretary, announces a shift in government equality priorities away from gender and race.
In the speech on Thursday afternoon, Truss is to say that the debate on equality has been “dominated by a small number of unrepresentative voices, and by those who believe people are defined by their protected characteristic”."
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fight-for-fairness-speech-to-set-out-governments-new-approach-to-equality
DeleteThe govt page which announces the speech due today, another revisionist special:
“Because when you choose on the basis of protected characteristics, you end up excluding people.”
Rats eating rats
ReplyDelete"The home secretary, Priti Patel, has accused a senior Tory MP of breaching Covid-19 rules after he attended a Christmas dinner for 27 people at a private members’ club.
Tobias Ellwood, an ex-Foreign Office minister who chairs the influential Commons defence select committee, gave a speech at the Cavalry and Guards Club in London on Tuesday evening hours before the capital moved into tier 3. Only a day earlier in parliament he called on the government to review its plans to relax restrictions for Christmas to avoid a third wave in the new year.
The dinner, in Piccadilly, was held by the Iraq Britain Business Council (IBBC), which initially described the event as a “Christmas party” on its website before changing the reference to say it was a “business dinner”.
The Conservative peer, Lady Nicholson, who co-hosted the dinner as IBBC’s president and is the prime minister’s trade envoy to Iraq, told the BBC it was a business event, the rules had been “strictly followed”, and that the venue was Covid compliant."
As previously posted on this blog, the wealthy & the priveleged have the resources & influence to twist & bend & adjust the rules to suit their own needs.
I don't doubt there will be an explosion of well-attended "business dinners" this Xmas period, willingly catered for by desperate hospitality teams.
"just use the millions invested to hand a bacon sarnie, some lodgings, and some optimism to our clients." Yes. Also yes, Getafix: on the frontline in many departments, there is an assumption that Probation is there to "fix" things and help and then from above, an assumption that the job is "risk management" and punitive approach. All these expectations collide onto my desk every day.
ReplyDeleteWell their not clients . Probationers offenders ex but they are not paying a fee for service. They monitored assessed and given particular instructions to reduce their offending . Clients they ain't.
DeleteAnon 07:24 We've been over this issue many times and there is no easy and acceptable alternative to the very long established term 'client'. For that reason it will remain in use, especially by practitioners who wish to keep alive the probation ethos as opposed to the current 'command and control' HMPPS-imposed doctrine.
Delete07:24 - You don't actually have to pay to be a client. Legally-aided clients have legal representation.
DeleteA 'client' doesn't necessarily have to pay for a service but they do have to choose to use a service voluntarily which is why I don't think it's a good fit for probation.
DeleteBtw I have worked in probation for 15 years and have never heard anyone refer to anyone as clients!
Anon 14:43 Like many things in life, there's an historical reason and I suspect it's connected to the fact that there was indeed a 'voluntary' aspect to a person's involvement. A Probation Order was not a sentence by a court, but rather the wonderfully anomalous-sounding 'alternative' to a sentence to which the defendant had to give consent. Many officers of a certain vintage feel strongly that changing this legal definition was a big mistake, fundamentally changing the whole ethos of the service. The fact that you have never heard use of the term serves to underline how far we've come in a relatively short period of time.
Delete14:43 - I think that an excellent observation: no one uses the word anymore. The word 'offender' seems to roll of the probation lips quite easily these day. The ethos has changed, the reprogramming worked!
DeleteDont agree. You will hear 'offender' occasionally in the work contexts I'm regularly in but 'client' or more often 'service user' are at least as common. New PQIPS are particularly switched on to this.
DeleteService users is fine . Customers is not.
ReplyDeleteData to 30 November 2020 - The key findings in this release are:
ReplyDelete•72 prisoners, children in custody and probation service users have died having tested positive for COVID-19 or where there was a clinical assessment that COVID-19 was a contributory factor in their deaths. Of whom 47 were prisoners and 25 were probation service users.
•Of the 72 deaths, 60 were suspected or confirmed to be caused by COVID-19, 37 were prisoners and 23 probation service users.
•3,460 prisoners or children tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, across 110 establishments, almost all of whom were adults. The number of new monthly confirmed cases has increased by 1,825 since October 2020. 81 establishments had prisoners or children testing positive in November 2020
*** 7 further deaths have been recorded in the two weeks to 14 Dec, bringing the total to 79.
*** a further 826 positive cases have been reported in the last two weeks
I just read Chris grayling has been on the fiddle again 35million to his port authorities advisory job while the rest get little. Another Tory example of cronies in clover. Happy Xmas .
ReplyDeleteExactly why he gets handed £2,000 a week. Its not a bad return is it?
Delete"The government is facing questions over why £35m of post-Brexit cash was awarded to a ports company advised by former minister Chris Grayling – while others received “next to nothing”.
Labour MP Rachel Reeves quizzed the government about the money in the Commons on Thursday after details of the government’s £194m port infrastructure fund, designed to help ports build import controls needed for post-Brexit checks next year, were leaked to the Financial Times. They show that two ports owned by Hutchison Ports Europe, where former transport secretary Grayling recently took on a £100,000-a-year role as a strategic adviser, were handed £35m of the cash.
Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove replied: “The port infrastructure scheme had an independent team to look at the eligibility of all the ports that applied and to assess all of the bids and they have done on the most rigorous of bases."
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/12/exclusive-government-threatened-legal-action-over-inadequate-food-boxes
Delete"The Environment Secretary George Eustice, the Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick and two private food wholesalers face questions about the “inadequate” nature of the weekly food parcels for the clinically extremely vulnerable and the “high prices paid” for their contents, it is revealed in a legal letter dated 14 December.
DeleteThe price of each box – which the New Statesman estimated to be £44 compared with £26 if they had been delivered by Tesco – “seems significantly inflated” in the view of the Good Law Project’s lawyers, who claim the “bare facts suggest that private operators may have made very significant profits” and are asking the government to reveal more about the costing process."
What you can get lost. Us private companies work on contract. Let me tell you lot we spend hours working through every contract gap to make our meagre profits just over 50 percent on all we do are tight margins. You all should be grateful we are doing the crap work you won't . That profit is tight when compared to our other contracts so be happy. We are. The cheaper rates from Tesco won't match the care and love place into our boxes nurturing every little penny spent into our account. Of course a good service for the contract too. We get that based on grayling logic and of course our kick back to Tory MPs who have to have their spot or we don't get our bid. So wake up it's all fair in the cronies party. Oh and shut up again you Jim brown winers club of benevolent do gooders you know you don't mean any of it.
DeleteJust in case anyone thought the electoral college had confirmed that Biden won the US election, recent news from Tantrum Times proves otherwise:
ReplyDelete* "We won Wisconsin big. They rigged the vote!"
* "Just released data shows many thousands of noncitizens voted in Nevada. They are totally ineligible to vote!"
* "I am very disappointed in the United States Supreme Court, and so is our great country!"
* "We won the Presidential Election, by a lot. FIGHT FOR IT. Don’t let them take it away!"
MTC in the news.
ReplyDeleteWhats really shocking apart from the conditions being reported on, is how a private company (with an appalling record in the USA), can just stick their fingers up to the Government that contracted them to provide services, lie, and ignore inspectors and watchdogs instructions.
Make you wonder who really is in charge!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-55364754
'Getafix
Listening to the report earlier, it seems the local management team are claiming they had no knowledge of any of the problems.
Deletefri 18 dec 2020
ReplyDeletenew cases: 28,507 +ve tests
deaths (28 day rules): 532 : total = 66,541
Deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate:
Weekly = 3,160
Total = 76,287
There'll be 80,000 by Xmas as predicted.
FfranK.
"This is the list of what the EU is paying:
DeleteOxford/AstraZeneca: €1.78
Johnson & Johnson: $8.50
Sanofi/GSK: €7.56
Pfizer/BioNTech: €12
CureVac: €10
Moderna: $18
The UK, like the EU, has paid a lot of money up front to help in the development of a number of vaccines that may or may not work, including Astra Zeneca’s, so the final prices for those will be lower. However, it did not support Pfizer/BioNTech nor Moderna, so will be left with a high price tag for those vaccines.
The United States has paid higher prices than Europe. Bernstein Research, an analysis and investment firm, calculated that the EU has a 24% discount on the Pfizer vaccine compared to the United States. Part of the reason may be that Europe helped fund the original research by BioNTech.
The US will pay $4 a dose for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine currently under development, compared to the price for the EU of €1.78, which is 45% cheaper for Europe, according to Bernstein.
At the other end of the scale, Moderna’s vaccine, developed in Cambridge, Massachusetts with $2.5 billion of funding and orders from Operation Warp Speed, will cost 20% more on the European market – at $18 a dose compared to $15 in the US."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/18/belgian-minister-accidentally-tweets-eus-covid-vaccine-price-list
Welcome back frank
Delete"A British logistics company has received almost £800m of Covid-19-related contracts, making it the largest recipient of pandemic deals handed out by the Department of Health and Social Care without an open tender.
DeleteUniserve, an Essex-based transport firm that last reported annual sales of £243m, says it will make tens of millions of pounds profit from £779m of contracts to supply the government with personal protective equipment (PPE) and logistics services during the coronavirus crisis.
Iain Liddell, the managing director of Uniserve said margins on Uniserve’s government contracts ranged between 5% and 20%"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/18/uk-logistics-firm-almost-800m-covid-contracts-without-tender-uniserve
Priti Aunty says things about some Northen bloke:
ReplyDelete"The home secretary has attacked the mayor of Greater Manchester as the area’s chief constable stepped down after the force was placed in special measures.
Ian Hopkins said he was bringing forward his retirement in the wake of a damning report by inspectors that found the force had failed to record 80,000 crimes, a fifth of all offences, in the year to 30 June.
The announcement was welcomed by Priti Patel. However, the home secretary’s spokesman then attacked the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, saying that he had “thrown a senior police officer under the bus to save his own skin”.
Patel’s spokesman added: “This will not distract from [Burnham’s] years of failure, and most disturbingly his unwillingness and inability to deliver justice for victims and survivors of the most abhorrent crimes.”
I wasn't aware that mayors ran the local police, courts and victim support services.
Greater Manchester is a devolved authority and the Mayor does run the police. Previously it was the PCC but that role was discontinued when the mayoral role was created.
Deletethis blog is better than wiki - thanks.
DeleteAnd... £1b+ contract for Capita to train the Navy and Royal Marines.
ReplyDeleteOnline training?
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/capita-wins-royal-navy-training-23188395
So the Clown Prince & co think we're so trustworthy that we don't need rules to manage Xmas because we'll do the right thing.
ReplyDeleteQ: if we the people are so trustworthy & responsible, why won't they pay full sick pay from the first day? Or a decent welfare package for the unemployed? Or a decent minimum/living wage?
Because they think the great unwashed little people will lie & cheat & steal, unlike their chums who, er, lie & cheat & steal - but that's different because its called 'business'.
This incongruous stance is at the core of the nation's confusion:
- can't be trusted to make a benefit claim, but can be trusted to manage a global pandemic;
- can't be trusted to be honest about being unwell, but can be trusted not to spread a lethal virus;
- but 'we' can do whatever the fuck we like.
Hmmm, sound familiar? A bit like a cut-&-dried case of coercive control, serial financial & emotional abuse in a relationship where there's a severe power imbalance.
Grow up. Its 2 days every 3 years. It's mandatory through statutory guidance and single agency training is always going to be compromised. Get yourself on LA safeguarding events as well.
ReplyDelete