Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Badgers]

 

[elbows]

Swayne under fire, finally:

Coronavirus: Tory MP Sir Desmond Swayne refuses to apologise over Covid claims

Sir Desmond Swayne has been accused of spreading "dangerous misinformation" about coronavirus.

www.bbc.co.uk

Last time I heard him mentioned it was people taking the piss out of him on twitter because apparently at some point he claimed that 17,000 people die every day in the UK normally from all causes. The real figure is somewhere in the region of 10 times lower than that, and even 17,000 deaths in a single week would be considered a disaster. And we have seen levels of weekly death for England & Wales alone that exceed that during the worst weeks of pandemic waves.

 

[elbows]

Sexist stay at home advert withdrawn:

Coronavirus: Government withdraws 'sexist' Stay Home advert

An "infographic" urging people to remain indoors during lockdown showed only women doing chores.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[two sheds]

they've still got the same ad writers from WWII

 

[muscovyduck]

Sexist stay at home advert withdrawn:

Coronavirus: Government withdraws 'sexist' Stay Home advert

An "infographic" urging people to remain indoors during lockdown showed only women doing chores.

www.bbc.co.uk

That is lazy as fuck illustration and definitely produced by a tory donor's mediocre nephew.

 

[elbows]

That is lazy as fuck illustration and definitely produced by a tory donor's mediocre nephew.

I thought the illustration on the left showed Rees-Mogg reclining in parliament but then I realised those were someone elses legs on the couch.

 

[Sue]

Sexist stay at home advert withdrawn:

Coronavirus: Government withdraws 'sexist' Stay Home advert

An "infographic" urging people to remain indoors during lockdown showed only women doing chores.

www.bbc.co.uk

We really need a reaction emoji.

 

[two sheds]

Does show how it all works though. Ad agency exec goes in and pitches for the work stressing their expertise, gets the work based on their expertise, comes back gives the illustration to office junior guaranteeing huge markup.

 

[teuchter]

Does show how it all works though. Ad agency exec goes in and pitches for the work stressing their expertise, gets the work based on their expertise, comes back gives the illustration to office junior guaranteeing huge markup.

It does really open our eyes to how the world works doesn't it. Until now I'd assumed that the exec who pitches to the client is the one who does the illustration! But I bet they can't even use photoshop!

 

[Pickman's model]

they've still got the same ad writers from WWII

while we have higher casualty numbers than they did in ww2. boris johnson has killed nearly twice as many people in the uk as adolf hitler managed. (official stats; other measures indicate bj killed more than twice as many as ah managed, and ah had more than five years)

 

[two sheds]

It does really open our eyes to how the world works doesn't it. Until now I'd assumed that the exec who pitches to the client is the one who does the illustration! But I bet they can't even use photoshop!

Doesn't it just. And I'd assumed that the account exec who pitches to the client and makes all the promises is the one who makes sure there's somebody competent doing the illustration!! But you've enlightened me that they don't even check that the illustrator can use photoshop!!

 

[muscovyduck]

It does really open our eyes to how the world works doesn't it. Until now I'd assumed that the exec who pitches to the client is the one who does the illustration! But I bet they can't even use photoshop!

You might actually be bang on here, based on how the gov have been acting there is a big possibility they might have accepted a pitch from an illustrator direct or some small agency. I just don't think a large ad or design agency would let work like this through for a project of this importance. Not cuz it's sexist but because it's just not the callibre of work you'd expect. A design for a government in a pandemic is a really big deal, no reputable agency is letting anything but the best through. This doesn't look like "it was good but the clients watered it down" either. I'm not even saying it's shit, it's good, but not good enough for something like this.

 

[two sheds]

Mind you ad agency account execs often aren't the most socially enlightened of souls they may well not have noticed.

 

[teuchter]

You might actually be bang on here, based on how the gov have been acting there is a big possibility they might have accepted a pitch from an illustrator direct or some small agency. I just don't think a large ad or design agency would let work like this through for a project of this importance. Not cuz it's sexist but because it's just not the callibre of work you'd expect. A design for a government in a pandemic is a really big deal, no reputable agency is letting anything but the best through. This doesn't look like "it was good but the clients watered it down" either. I'm not even saying it's shit, it's good, but not good enough for something like this.

Yes... I did actually have a bit of a look on twitter etc to see if anyone had found who in fact produced the illustration. I agree with what you say. It would be interesting to know what the process was. It looks a bit like it was a facebook-specific advert. I wouldn't be totally surprised to find out it had been done by someone on the internet in India for £50.

 

[teuchter]

Doesn't it just. And I'd assumed that the account exec who pitches to the client and makes all the promises is the one who makes sure there's somebody competent doing the illustration!! But you've enlightened me that they don't even check that the illustrator can use photoshop!!

The point is that is doesn't "show" us anything without knowing the process that produced the illustration, because there are many different routes that might have been taken.

 

[two sheds]

The point is I've seen advertising agencies work and that's the general way they do things. It might be someone on the internet in India doing it although that doesn't seem to be the general procedure:

Total approved expenditure on marketing for the year to March 2019 was £300m. Government departments are required to select agencies from two specific rosters of agencies who are approved for assignments. The latest rosters, published in 2017 and valid until 2021, include around 27 separate agencies for major "campaign solutions" worth £100k or more and a further 66 for smaller campaigns.

UK HM Gov Communication Service advertising & marketing assignments at Adbrands.net

The UK Government's public service and other marketing is now overseen by the Government Communication Service, a successor to the long-established Central Office of Information, or COI.

www.adbrands.net

 

[two sheds]

Of course the agency may have farmed it out to someone on the internet in India.

 

[muscovyduck]

I really don't think a proper graphic designer was involved which suggests an advertising agency hasn't been involved. The background looks really familiar, does anyone recognise it? Was the illustration definitely produced for this and not nabbed from something else?

 

[Buddy Bradley]

It looks to me like a generic set of illustrated components (man, woman, child, house, furniture, etc.) that can then be combined in multiple different ways to create different narratives. (We have the same sort of illustration library at work.) So it could have been an agency, but equally it could have been some civil servant office tasked with doing it.

 

[teuchter]

A proper agency, and indeed most graphic designers, would be all over this kind of thing. Checking the content of illustrations for things like ethnic diversity, gender stereotypes and so on is standard, because anyone in that business knows what can happen if it blows up on twitter or whatever. Usually when this kind of thing happens, it's because the illustration has been done by someone who is not used to having to think about all that. I often spot these kinds of blunders in illustrations or graphics that have been done by people who mostly do, say, technical drawings or produce diagrams for scientific stuff or whatever. That, or they are very junior and their work hasn't been checked.

 

[muscovyduck]

I often spot these kinds of blunders in illustrations or graphics that have been done by people who mostly do, say, technical drawings or produce diagrams for scientific stuff or whatever.

Or recent grads

 

[strung out]

We've got a poster who works in Tory PR, so maybe they could shine a light on how something like this is arrived at.

 

[philosophical]

Just done the Imperial College/NHS/mori home fingerprick blood test for antibody research.
Lots of online questions answered.
The test indicated negative.
Said to not be 100% accurate, suspect in my case it was though as I have been pretty careful for the last year.

 

[souljacker]

while we have higher casualty numbers than they did in ww2. boris johnson has killed nearly twice as many people in the uk as adolf hitler managed. (official stats; other measures indicate bj killed more than twice as many as ah managed, and ah had more than five years)

Might have been different if we'd kept out borders open to any member of the SS who fancied a holiday though.

 

[Pickman's model]

Might have been different if we'd kept out borders open to any member of the SS who fancied a holiday though.

I understand many German officers enjoyed a sojourn on the channel islands

 

[cupid_stunt]

Today's reported figures.

New cases 28,600, that brings the average down 29.4% in the last 7 days.

New deaths 1,239, down 54 on last Thursday's figure, overall down 0.2% in the last 7 days.

 

[muscovyduck]

It looks to me like a generic set of illustrated components (man, woman, child, house, furniture, etc.) that can then be combined in multiple different ways to create different narratives. (We have the same sort of illustration library at work.) So it could have been an agency, but equally it could have been some civil servant office tasked with doing it.

I did wonder this, a lot of artists and designers who landed in general marketing jobs seem to have found an outlet in producing questionable coronavirus graphics.

 

[sheothebudworths]

In relation to all the 'now is not the time' stuff, latest from the Good Law Project -

Correspondence with Government has revealed they expect to spend a staggering £1 million defending our judicial review of their decisions to award contracts criticised by the NAO. This is a sum unprecedented in our lawyers’ experience of judicial review proceedings. We can’t but wonder whether they are trying to scare us off – using the bottomless public purse to avoid accountability to the public.

Government also says, remarkably, that finding out whether they acted lawfully in channelling hundreds of millions or billions to their VIP associates, is not in the public interest.
We had until recently been working on the understanding that we had raised enough money for our challenges to Government’s awards of hundreds of millions of pounds of PPE contracts to Pestfix, Ayanda, and Clandeboye.

We were shocked to learn that – having failed to provide the evidence we’ve been asking for since July – Government is threatening a vast disclosure exercise going well beyond what would normally be undertaken in a judicial review. And not just that they have hired an expensive international commercial law firm. They expect to have a team of 30-40 working for up to 3 months on an exercise that has not been requested by us, or by the Court.

In the experience of our legal team, costs incurred by Government in judicial review proceedings rarely exceed £100,000. Here Government says it has already spent over £325,000, and estimates their total costs will amount to £1 million – a staggering sum for a judicial review.

Government knows full well that we cannot take existential risk on bringing a single case. So we wrote to Government asking it to agree and order ‘capping’ both our costs and the taxpayers’ costs in these public interest proceedings.

We were shocked this week to receive their response contending that the litigation is not in the public interest, and refusing our proposed reciprocal cap: “In particular our client does not agree that the proceedings are ‘public interest proceedings'”. These are cases involving on Government’s own admission hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on unusable facemasks on companies that went through the VIP lane.

Not in the public interest? What are they on!

The point is all the more remarkable given that a barrister employed by the Government Legal Department in her witness statement of 30 November stated that: “We acknowledge that there is considerable public interest in Covid related procurement, particularly of PPE.”

We have now applied to the court for a Cost Cap. In line with our transparency principles I am publishing my Witness Statement. But if we don’t get one, unless a white knight or white knights emerge, the simple fact is we will have to abandon the litigation. We are not in a position to bear a £1 million risk.

Thank you,

Jolyon Maugham QC
Director of Good Law Project

 

[Cid]

In relation to all the 'now is not the time' stuff, latest from the Good Law Project -

Ah, there you go Wilf frogwoman , Jolyon was on the judicial review all along. Though it sounds like a bit of a clusterfuck. Perhaps potential for other cases, this ones seems specific to mask procurement.

 

[elbows]

I think last time I heard about saliva tests was some months ago when things didnt sound promising and a Salford trial was scaled back.

But now its back in the news:

Covid-19: No-swab saliva test finds symptomless cases

Studies show the no-swab saliva test is accurate, and experts say it may be more convenient for users.

www.bbc.co.uk

With this being the summary of the evaluation:

Rapid evaluation of Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ LamPORE assay

www.gov.uk

The spit test trial I did from the comfort of my own home over the summer involved exactly the same looking spit collection vessel as the one in the photo in the BBC article. But I never did really work out what trial it was that I was actually part of, in that I never found the study details online and media articles about spit tests always referred to a bunch of other trials in specific settings and geographical locations. I must have another look for clues about that one day, would have been nice to see some data & analysis of whatever study it was that I was actually in.

Its certainly very convenient and comfortable compared to the swab test (which I also had to do at the same time as part of the trial). But since the government has a track record of hyping alternative tests and trying to use some of them inappropriately, I will tend to reserve judgement until more real world data emerges.