Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[teuchter]

Masks on trains: not much sign of enforcement yesterday travelling around East Anglia. On the 7am to Norwich passengers were spacing themselves out among the seats but around half I saw pulled their masks down once the journey had begun, so they could chat and eat.

Some of the smaller stations east of Ely arent staffed or don't have ticket barriers and here a lot of younger people were getting straight on the train without a mask to begin with. It was a matter of individual preference. But at the terminus there was no attempt by staff to stop or even remonstrate with unmasked passengers going through the ticket barriers. Two stocky security guards stood by passively.

I spoke with a train guard coming off his shift. He sounded frustrated as he said the staff had been given no authority to do anything. All he had been asked to do was use the train's CCTV to count the number of non-wearers and forward this information to a manager.

I wasn't at all civic-minded in my teens so I can't feel animosity towards the young people breezing onto the train maskless and probably bunking the fare too. If my behaviour improved it was from being pulled up. Less generous towards older people who don't give a shit.

This is much how it is on trains in and around london.
They seem very keen on enforcing one way systems at larger stations but I've not seen any staff doing anything about masks. Not even mentioned on the on-train announcements.
It's not just young folk who are deciding to ignore it.

 

[platinumsage]

From ten years ago? They're recruiting now for 2021 Census posts.

Surely the DWP have a database with everyone on it? Or HMRC? It seems a really odd choice to me to pick a credit reference agency to do ID checking and outsource something which would be done better in the public sector but that's this government all over isn't it. Never pass up an opportunity to give public money to a private company.

It may be a surprise to some people, but the government doesn’t have a centralised record of everyone. HMRC knows who pays tax, but they only know them via their NI Number. They might have a correspondence address, but with most PAYE employees this is unlikely to be accurate. They don’t make a habit of cross referencing. Mostly because people would get upset if they gave their address to their GP and promptly received a tax bill. Or applied for a driving licence and got fined for not completing the census.

However the credit reference companies have databases geared towards verifying people’s identity for things they want to be verified for, e.g. applying for a bank account or phone contract. People freely give them this information for exactly that purpose, so they are better able to verify people’s identity than the government is.

 

[Doodler]

This is much how it is on trains in and around london.
They seem very keen on enforcing one way systems at larger stations but I've not seen any staff doing anything about masks. Not even mentioned on the on-train announcements.
It's not just young folk who are deciding to ignore it.

You would think more effort could be made. The supermarket example of trying to have one-way aisles is not encouraging but announcements or reminders on the backs of seats etc might still help. Staff or BTP with enough authority to watch ticket barriers and prowl some of the trains.

 

[xenon]

This is much how it is on trains in and around london.
They seem very keen on enforcing one way systems at larger stations but I've not seen any staff doing anything about masks. Not even mentioned on the on-train announcements.
It's not just young folk who are deciding to ignore it.

Anicdata. Travelling to and through London last week. There were announcements requesting passengers wear masks, or to be more accurate, face coverings. This was on First Great Western and Southeastern. This was a live announcement, not a recorded one. Don't recall if there were recorded announcements on the tube or Southern.

 

[Artaxerxes]

This is much how it is on trains in and around london.
They seem very keen on enforcing one way systems at larger stations but I've not seen any staff doing anything about masks. Not even mentioned on the on-train announcements.
It's not just young folk who are deciding to ignore it.

It's just not worth the hassle for staff to challenge people, we've a culture of shitting on workers and odds are good anyone being told to put a mask in will eventually result in someone getting punched.

Fuck we've already had an old fart in Canada go loco and shoot up a store for telling him to mask, and a bus driver in France getting lynched for telling the wrong people to mask up.

 

[two sheds]

From ten years ago? They're recruiting now for 2021 Census posts.

Surely the DWP have a database with everyone on it? Or HMRC? It seems a really odd choice to me to pick a credit reference agency to do ID checking and outsource something which would be done better in the public sector but that's this government all over isn't it. Never pass up an opportunity to give public money to a private company.

Would be missing off kids. Perhaps NHS lists? But exactly - it's an ideal opportunity to update existing lists rather than piss loads of money up the wall while making more peoples' data unsafe.

 

[wtfftw]

I certainly wouldn't be telling people to mask up, remembering Belly Mujinga who was spat at then died.

 

[baldrick]

It may be a surprise to some people, but the government doesn’t have a centralised record of everyone. HMRC knows who pays tax, but they only know them via their NI Number. They might have a correspondence address, but with most PAYE employees this is unlikely to be accurate. They don’t make a habit of cross referencing. Mostly because people would get upset if they gave their address to their GP and promptly received a tax bill. Or applied for a driving licence and got fined for not completing the census.

However the credit reference companies have databases geared towards verifying people’s identity for things they want to be verified for, e.g. applying for a bank account or phone contract. People freely give them this information for exactly that purpose, so they are better able to verify people’s identity than the government is.

It does come as a surprise to me BUT then I remember the big anti-ID card campaign some years ago and the argument with respect to that was in fact the creation of a comprehensive database with everyone on it, not just the physical ID card and the laws around making it mandatory. So you're right. But also these days when people die they have the 'tell us once' scheme don't they where all sorts of govt functions are linked up. So although there isn't a single database it feels like a missed opportunity in some ways not to use publicly held data we already have - because credit ref agencies have electoral roll data and probably other stuff too. It's not all their own data from credit companies, they are using public data in some way already. So why can't we do that?

 

[ash]

We were at that point in March, almost everyone had started locking down a week or even two before Boris officially said lockdown was a thing.

I know from a friend who works for one of the big city companies that they started suggesting people wfh towards end of Feb and enforced it on 6th March.

 

[two sheds]

It may be a surprise to some people, but the government doesn’t have a centralised record of everyone.

It would I imagine come as a surprise to the census people.

 

[platinumsage]

It does come as a surprise to me BUT then I remember the big anti-ID card campaign some years ago and the argument with respect to that was in fact the creation of a comprehensive database with everyone on it, not just the physical ID card and the laws around making it mandatory. So you're right. But also these days when people die they have the 'tell us once' scheme don't they where all sorts of govt functions are linked up. So although there isn't a single database it feels like a missed opportunity in some ways not to use publicly held data we already have - because credit ref agencies have electoral roll data and probably other stuff too. It's not all their own data from credit companies, they are using public data in some way already. So why can't we do that?

We could, in theory, but it would be a massive IT project involving the integration of existing data from various sources, and the government’s record on that sort of thing going back decades is just appalling. Plus it would lack all the financial data, as I’m not sure many people would opt in to having all their loans, savings and phone payment data handed over to the government. So the end result wouldn’t be as good as the info the credit reference agencies already have with permission to use.

The tell us once thing isn’t really comparable as it basically just involves a form which is copied and sent to several places.

 

[platinumsage]

It would I imagine come as a surprise to the census people.

In order to encourage people to complete the census it’s enshrined in law that the data can only be used for census purposes for a hundred years. No chance any of it could be used for ID checks or medical testing.

 

[two sheds]

ok, and as pointed out it it's nearly 10 years out of date, it still exists as a centralized record of everyone though.

 

[two sheds]

Why not NHS lists for the bulk of it though? Whether someone's had a test should go on the NHS records anyway, with the result.

Eta: Bit of a strange argument anyway since they were sending out twice as many testing kits as they needed to when they announced them. Mind you that was fraudulent, so they could bump up the figures. Like they've been recording double the number of PPE gloves they've been sending out by counting a pair as two items

Eta eta: But that would of course have meant giving money to the NHS to do the recording rather than their private sector mates, god I'm silly at times

 

[platinumsage]

Why not NHS lists for the bulk of it though? Whether someone's had a test should go on the NHS records anyway, with the result.

Eta: Bit of a strange argument anyway since they were sending out twice as many testing kits as they needed to when they announced them. Mind you that was fraudulent, so they could bump up the figures. Like they've been recording double the number of PPE gloves they've been sending out by counting a pair as two items

Eta eta: But that would of course have meant giving money to the NHS to do the recording rather than their private sector mates, god I'm silly at times

Tests are connected to your NHS number and results are sent to your GP to go on your medical records.

The ID check we've been talking about is for tests sent out in the post. Obviously they need to verify identity for these. They could have asked people to input their NHS number or try and cross-check their current address with whatever address records they could grab from GPs or hospitals, but the number of rejects would have been far higher. The ID check method they chose is already in use by HMRC, the Passport Office etc so is already proven to actually work online and be more effective than any other method. Obviously not perfect but nothing is.

 

[belboid]

They might have a correspondence address, but with most PAYE employees this is unlikely to be accurate.

?? It's highly likely to be accurate. That's why P45's and P60's are taken as proof of address. Though it does miss quite a lot of people out.

 

[platinumsage]

?? It's highly likely to be accurate. That's why P45's and P60's are taken as proof of address. Though it does miss quite a lot of people out.

In most cases those aren't accepted as proof of address but only of NI number as they use address data from the employer. Only if HMRC has reason to write to you directly will they have your address.

The electoral roll is about 85% complete. A data matching exercise found this could be increased by only a few percent when using additional data from other organisations such as the DWP/HMRC, DoE, Royal Mail and Student Loans. (this was before individual voter registration, I don't know if its better or worse now).

 

[two sheds]

Tests are connected to your NHS number and results are sent to your GP to go on your medical records.

So they have to match it to the medical records anyway. Seems an unnecessary extra step to use the private company

The ID check we've been talking about is for tests sent out in the post. Obviously they need to verify identity for these. They could have asked people to input their NHS number or try and cross-check their current address with whatever address records they could grab from GPs or hospitals, but the number of rejects would have been far higher.

Why far higher? If they did it through the GPs, giving them the extra funding for people there to do the checking, surely you've caught the great majority of people who will be asking for tests.

The ID check method they chose is already in use by HMRC, the Passport Office etc so is already proven to actually work online and be more effective than any other method. Obviously not perfect but nothing is.

But HMRC are only going to have tax payers, Passport Office only people with passports. NHS lists should have all of them plus children who'd also be missed off HMRC.

Credit checks won't be getting kids either if they need a test, plus we've seen even on urban there are people who've had problems with this system.

 

[platinumsage]

So they have to match it to the medical records anyway. Seems an unnecessary extra step to use the private company

Why far higher? If they did it through the GPs, giving them the extra funding for people there to do the checking, surely you've caught the great majority of people who will be asking for tests.

There wasn't the time to set up a system in which GPs check the identity online of hundreds of thousands of people a day, and no way on earth they would have wanted or been able to do that during a pandemic situation. Using the best-available existing online ID check method makes a lot more sense.

But HMRC are only going to have tax payers, Passport Office only people with passports. NHS lists should have all of them plus children who'd also be missed off HMRC.

I said HMRC and the Passport Office use the method for checking IDs, not that the ID system uses their data (although it does along with lots of other data). As I said ID checking using NHS data was not feasible because the address data is not remotely accurate, especially for people who haven't been to hospital recently.

Credit checks won't be getting kids either if they need a test, plus we've seen even on urban there are people who've had problems with this system.

It's not a credit check but uses credit and other data. Sure people will have problems with whatever method is used, but I've not seen anyone come up with a better idea given the timescale and challenges involved.

 

[Doodler]

Seems likely that a firm such as Experian would become involved and the government would probably like that to happen. They're already offer security background checks which provide information additional to that given in a Standard DBS certificate at least. If they know where you live they can probably make some guesses about you based on your Experian Mosaic neighbourhood profile too. The Civil Service don't have their own off-the-shelf products for such purposes, or at least didn't a few years ago.

 

[Cloo]

I had wondered whether anyone was looking into the possibility of control via some kind of simple regular testing (seeing as even at peak, it's still only a minority that will actually be ill/infectious), although this sounds logistically unlikely to work out: Fergus Walsh: Could spit tests help end the pandemic?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's not a credit check but uses credit and other data. Sure people will have problems with whatever method is used, but I've not seen anyone come up with a better idea given the timescale and challenges involved.

Offer the tests on people's word and take whatever hit there is wrt fraud as a consequence? Is widespread fraud even likely?

 

[two sheds]

Yep, as I say they were happy to send out more tests than needed when it counted to their statistics they were trying to inflate.

And what are they doing with the millions of kids, who don't have a credit rating?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Maybe this would lead to gangsters moving in and hoovering up millions of tests for some reason that I have missed. What fraud would there be? If there is a little bit, who cares?

 

[zahir]

Yep, as I say they were happy to send out more tests than needed when it counted to their statistics they were trying to inflate.

And what are they doing with the millions of kids, who don't have a credit rating?

Without going on the site to check I think the idea is that a parent applies on behalf of the child and it‘s the parent’s identity that is checked. In that situation the chances are you’d be ordering tests for the whole family.

 

[two sheds]

Without going on the site to check I think the idea is that a parent applies on behalf of the child and it‘s the parent’s identity that is checked.

Ha! Potential for fraud there, people claiming for dozens of children.

 

[ash]

Without going on the site to check I think the idea is that a parent applies on behalf of the child and it‘s the parent’s identity that is checked.

Yes that’s what we did - child has the symptoms so we all had to be tested. Couldn’t log in as her so the adult logged in and then can add up to 4 others

 

[quimcunx]

I had wondered whether anyone was looking into the possibility of control via some kind of simple regular testing (seeing as even at peak, it's still only a minority that will actually be ill/infectious), although this sounds logistically unlikely to work out: Fergus Walsh: Could spit tests help end the pandemic?

You can do pool testing. Mix say 6 peoples samples and test that. If its positive you test that group individually.

 

[quimcunx]

I think I might have been asked for my NHS number but I dont remember being asked anything else.

 

[ash]

I think I might have been asked for my NHS number but I dont remember being asked anything else.

We were asked but they said it wasn’t essential