Totally not The Thick of It

Yes, I’ve decided that the one thing you really need on election day in the US is an entry about politics here in the UK.

So, in June and July the lockdown ended and things started opening up. Then the Government decided to boost restaurants by creating a scheme they called Eat Out to Help Out. This gave everyone 50% of an eat in meal, up to a value of £10, every Monday to Wednesday for the whole of August.

There’s no way whatsoever that this could be a bad idea and exacerbate the situation, right?

One piece of research estimates it boosted transmission by up to 17%.

Ooops.

But at least it helped out restaurants. And, by some accounts, saw widespread fraud.

Then schools went back. Which saw, yet again, a rise in cases. Then universities went back, which saw huge outbreaks in the halls of residence. At one, they literally locked the students in. The food situation was dire and they were at risk of running out of post-it’s from making signs in windows.

Most universities have now gone back to online except where really necessary. After, of course, taking their tuition and rent. Students at one university are threatening a rent strike and at least on firm of solicitors are offering their services pro-bono.

Meanwhile, there’s our track and trace system. The one that was going to be world beating. The first attempt at an app completely failed. This is because, instead of using the Android and iOS systems like everyone else did, the government decided to build their own from scratch.

Even I could have predicted it wouldn’t have worked.

So, they eventually built one that did use the Android and iOS system. And added a QR scanner, for no real reason. (OK, it’s actually to scan yourself as being in places. It’s more hassle than it’s worth.)

Oh, and because it is based on an old version of Android and iOS it gives out false alarms (I’ve had a couple myself). When it was launched, if you didn’t book a test through it then you couldn’t let it know that you tested negative and it still insisted you self isolate.

While this was happening, there was the other side of track and trace. The call centre side. Which has a 60% success rate at contacting people. Some local councils currently have a 95% success rate in the same. That’s right, our world beating track and trace system couldn’t even beat local councils.

The price of this? £12 billion.

While all this was going on, the government picked a new target. And got into an argument with a Premiership footballer about helping hungry kids.

For this story, we have to go back to before summer. When schools were out because of the lockdown, parents were given vouchers for food for kids on free school meals. Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford started an ultimately successful campaign for the voucher system to be extended for the length of the summer holidays. For this, he was given an MBE.

It’s coming up to the Christmas holidays and Rashford has started his campaign again. The Labour party put forward a vote in the Commons on the issue. The Tories, as if they were determined to prove they are indeed the nasty party, lined up to speak against.

Were you aware there’s an epidemic of drug dealers taking £15 vouchers for food in shops in exchange for drugs? Apparently, it’s a serious problem over here.

They then voted the motion down. One Tory MP argued after that most of the money goes to crack dens and brothels and doubled down by saying some of the vouchers would be used to buy scuba gear.

Then, the government decided to simply things by having local situations indicated by a three tier system. Tier 1 is medium, tier 2 is high and tier 3 is very high. What tier 3 actually is is determined by negotiations with local government.

Then Greater Manchester needed to move to tier 3. And the negotiations failed. The mayor of Greater Manchester asked for £65 million in additional funding while the government were offering no more than £60 million. So the government decided to impost tier 3 on them and gave an additional £20 million.

So, now the simple 3 tier system is tier 1, tier 1+ (no, me either), tier 2, tier 3 (with local council agreement) and tier 3 (imposed).

Simple, no?