| Topic: | Re:Two metres/Six feet of distance may not be enough to prevent coronavirus transmission | |
| Posted by: | Peter Chadburn | |
| Date/Time: | 29/05/20 11:13:00 |
| The big danger is that thanks to the Cummings story Johnson will want to accelerate going back to normality. The Hospitality sector is on it's knees and so to do this may appear to be based on scientific advise (from whom??) But it is still too early to know whether we are coming out of things. Table service to socially distanced tables would appear to be the answer in the short term. But then with our approach to Quarantine on incoming flights happening months too late and previous advice on masks being ineffective the governments response apart from the nightingale hospitals are baffling. Our ministers and civil servants did not have the required urgency from the start. It was the general public who have led all the way through by deciding in large numbers to effectively lock down before the government said so. Individual companies decided to shut before anything was enforced. However Cummings has insulted all of that and an apology and recognition of how it looked might have helped. He is a guy of some talent who when he asked for wierdos was making a good point. Our ministers and civil servants act far too slowly but then when they get Deloittes and Serco involved they are far too slow to react. In Britain we have a slow bureaucracy that lacks flair to cut through problems. In the war Churchill got round this by forcing decision making. The claim about brexit was to take back control but our own officials operate in such a rule based manner. We have people that operate within rules and dont think outside of the Box. however our rule based tick box society means that we don't challenge. Part of our current shambles is this culture. A minister asks the NHS to do something but only finds out a month later that it hasn't happened. They employ consultancies who just produce nice diagrams. The consultancies share a similar mentality. So can we really be surprised by our slow official response??? As an IT person who worked with wierdos on successful projects i feel that as a country we are now entering a perfect storm of pandemic/brexit and that our government culture is not equipped to adapt. The outsourcing from the civil service and the constant privatisation of elements of the NHS have made the processes of government more complex. Maybe Cummings had the ability to change things but his uncooperative manner will doom him to failure. |