ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

Starmer says if there were rapidly escalating rona infections and deaths under a Labour government then the correct figures would be released in a competent and timely fashion.

Can't tell if that's a joke

Hat Mancock, not at all shook

Bloody hell. Asked a fairly reasonable question in the Commons, Matt Hancock replies: “I will not have this divisive language. I will not have it.”

You will not have Parliamentary scrutiny? Then you may be in the wrong job, sir. pic.twitter.com/gTQ6pLWGWo

— Matthew Thompson (@mattuthompson) October 2, 2020

Matt Hancock response chart. pic.twitter.com/5Pitdy1jPF

— Imranbristol (@Imranicus) October 3, 2020

I think a few blood vessels just burst

In the UK the number of cases rose rapidly.
But the public – and authorities – are only learning this now because these cases were only published now as a backlog.

The reason was apparently that the database is managed in Excel and the number of columns had reached the maximum. pic.twitter.com/X4a8keSEHK

— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) October 5, 2020

Lol

PHE 🤝Kelly Rowland

catastrophic misuses of Excel

lol gyac

row numbers = 1048576, columns (A-XFD) = 16384

XFD is not where *i'd* choose to end but you do you excel

Trying to work out if that Hancock response is butthurt or if it's now part of a deliberate communications strategy. Slough isn't going to return a Tory MP any time soon so why bother saying anything at all?

suspect it might be a deliberate "lol nothing matters" strategy

I mean leaving aside the elephant in the room as to why he might take that tone with Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi and Dr Rosena Allin-Khan.

Oh god the fix these geniuses came up with is to split the results into multiple sheets. Switching to rows apparently unthinkable.

xp was going to mention that i'm sure he's had run-ins with Singh Dhesi before

bring down the government by showing them pivot tables

The civil service is awash with people with amazing excel skills they learned doing they European Computer Driving Licence 20 years ago and has almost no-one who can find their way around a database.

*their

As a data engineer I'm pretty shocked they aren't at least using some kind of ingest into Azure > PowerBI setup tbh.

Having worked in parts of public sector I am not.

Not just a public sector problem tbh

the document that @maxcroser attaches seems in fact to say nothing abt excel or columns -- that's his added interpretation (and i think cheeky joke?)

not that this isn't an absurd fuck up, it's just not that particular absurd fuck up (or maybe it is but the document doesn't specifically say so)

The Mail is claiming that it was Excel-linked — they've solved it by splitting the files — and the numbers tapped out at exactly XFD which is a v. odd coincidence if it's not the case that they've been using columns for rows

pic.twitter.com/yeQlqVOPVF

— leckie (@verblet) October 5, 2020

If they are using any version of Excel after 2007 then the upper row count is 1,048,576. I wonder if that (+ 16,000 missing rows) ties in with the official counts?

Otherwise they hit 65,536 which means they are still on Excel 2003 which would be the icing on the cake of stupidity.

Nicola Sturgeon just accidentally called Margaret Ferrier "Margaret Covid" again!

Also expecting new restrictions announced this week with talk of a 'circuit breaker' of some sort.

a 32 amp/30 mA rcbo should do the trick

sorry I don't know anything about excel so just needlessly posting something I'm allegedly a confirmed expert on!

Various Scottish talking heads have used "short sharp shock" instead of circuit breaker which reminds me of the scary language used around borstals and keeping kids in line in the 70s using cunts worse that Mackay in 'Porridge'

(also hi from a fellow (former) spark!)

respec!

Does a circuit breaker include closing schools again or just everything else?

still chatting about the two weeks that'll cover half term across England i think?

too much Pink Floyd in 70s Scotland xp

hahahaha pic.twitter.com/XYPN9bWQuy

— dynamic_proxy (@dynamic_proxy) October 5, 2020

Another wonderful intervention:

Boris Johnson urges people to ‘go to the cinema’ following news Cineworld is temporarily closing UK sites https://t.co/sYuUP0PavI

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) October 5, 2020

October half-term holiday is just a week.

bars and cafes in Paris to close for 2 weeks starting tomorrow.

xp But it's not the same week - either 19th-23rd or 26th-30th?

yeah exactly, different areas seem to be out of sync so two weeks would cover all areas. obv that still *might* entail "shutting" schools for a week but i assume the logic is it'll just be a week

I expect Scotland will further restrict hospitality to coincide with the October school break. The language so far has been that anywhere there's tradeoffs, keeping the schools open remains a priority.

If they close hotels or holiday parks during the school break they'll take serious incoming as loads of people who had to cancel summer holidays have booked 'staycations' for the October week.

Turns out the short sharp shock thing was really out into practice under Thatcher (natch) so more early 80s than 70s.

https://youtu.be/OaulyuLQ1j0

Comments on this are all former lads listing their sentences. "Aldington 1980. Had a great time. Made a man of me."

Aye ok Carlin...

there was a bit of a(nother) 50's revival of hard-right macho warfare state attitude (see also clause 28) in the 80's because apparently that stage of the dying empire was a golden era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUVBnjg0-Gw Thatcher at the start...

that'll show 'em

Well, not thatcher, but it's a quote from her? I don't remember.

the quote was Willie Whitelaw, it's mentioned in the borstal vid upthread, and i remember it being made at the time but i don't think the phrase was a new coinage tbh

Ah! thanks

they probably used the same phrase in the Kenyan gulags

The phrase was around for years (wikipedia has it in The Mikado and in a translation of the First Satire of Horace). It was repurposed for abusing teenagers following Whitelaw's speech and made its way into Thatcher's 1979 manifesto.

Tories love a G&S quote don't they?

In the Mikado it means having your head removed.