Michael Lambert: Surely the Biggest Waste of Money in UK History

Jul 13, 2024 | The new Labour government have said that they will pursue those who are believed to have supplied inferior or unusable PPE. This will be difficult. There is no case to answer where suppliers overcharged and those who supplied unsuitable or unusable PPE may well have moved their profits offshore and liquidated their companies.

The former government's Test and Trace under the management of Dido Harding was a catastrophic waste of public money. £35 billion pounds was budgeted although only £28 billion was actually spent. This compares to £18.3 billion for the entire Cross Rail project, at the time the biggest construction project in Europe involving 60 miles of new track, 25 of them in two tunnels under London, new stations, signalling and 30 new trains.

Test and Trace was a failure and the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee questioned if it had been of any benefit at all. Thousands of consultants were employed at an average of £1,100 per day each for many months.

Test and Trace was surely the biggest waste ever of public money in the UK.

Times Have Never Been Better for Billionaires.

Feb 16, 2022 • These are very difficult times for working families. But for billionaires and the CEOs of large corporations, times have never been better. I’m on the Senate floor to explain why.

Austria's Covid-vaccine Mandate: Can It Be Enforced? | DW News

Feb 5, 2022 • Austria has become the first European country to mandate coronavirus vaccination for all adults. It is also the first country that will now have to enforce a vaccination mandate. Starting next month, Austrian police will carry out random spot-checks to see whether people can produce proof of vaccination. Those who can't face fines of 600 euros or more. Vienna set up mobile vaccination buses to increase that number. The willingness to get a jab is stagnant, despite the new bill.

Even before the controversial bill was passed, security was tight at vaccination centers. No other topic polarizes Austrians as much as mandatory vaccination. Those who administer the vaccines can do so only when security is nearby. There is concern about hostile outbursts by anti-vaxxers.

Tens of thousands of them have been taking to the streets almost every weekend across the country to protest against COVID measures. They are a minority. But Werner Reisinger, who is researching radicalism, says, the protests should not be underestimated.

He says the Austrian government failed to reach this crowd, especially when its declaration last summer that the COVID crisis was over was followed by a political crisis of its own. Austria expects an avalanche of lawsuits by those unwilling to pay possible fines starting at 600 euros and to be enforced from mid-March. Vienna is focusing on those whose opinion could still be swayed: The undecided. The city put up billboards in various foreign languages in their latest effort to counter misinformation.

Covid and the Gaping Wealth Gap: What Can Be Done to Fix It? | DW News

Jan 29, 2022 • The coronavirus pandemic has made the rich even richer – and the poor even poorer. Here is why – and what we can do to combat this rise in inequality, which has pushed 160 million people into poverty, while the richest 10 men double their fortunes.

Wealth of World's 10 Richest Men Doubled in Pandemic, Oxfam Says - BBC News

Jan 17, 2022 • The Covid pandemic has made the world's wealthiest far richer but has led to more people living in poverty, according to the charity Oxfam.

Their report said lower incomes for the world's poorest contributed to the death of 21,000 people each day.

But the world's 10 richest men have more than doubled their collective fortunes since March 2020.

Oxfam's report is based on data from the Forbes Billionaires List and the annual Credit Suisse Global Wealth report, which gives the distribution of global wealth going back to 2000.


Related.

New ‘Variant of Concern’ Fuels Global Fear of Another Virus Surge

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Scientists do not yet know how dangerous the new Omicron variant is, but its many mutations set off alarms, lowering hopes of putting the pandemic in the past.

The world reacted with alarm on Friday to the highly mutated new coronavirus variant discovered in southern Africa, as the United States, the European Union and nations across the globe imposed new travel restrictions, financial markets swooned and visions of finally emerging from the pandemic started to dim.

Just two days after the world learned of the variant, the World Health Organization officially labeled it a “ variant of concern,” its most serious category — the first since the Delta variant, which emerged a year ago. The designation means that the variant has mutations that might make it more contagious or more virulent, or make vaccines and other preventive measures less effective — though none of those effects has yet been established.

After an emergency meeting, the W.H.O. warned in a statement that “preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant” in people who have already had Covid-19. In keeping with the practice of naming variants for letters of the Greek alphabet, it dubbed the new one Omicron. » | Richard Pérez-Peña and Jason Horowitz | Published: Friday, November 26, 2021; updated: Saturday, November 27, 2021

Germany finds a suspected case of the variant. »

Two cases of Omicron Covid variant identified in UK: The B.1.1.529 variant, described in Britain as ‘the most worrying we’ve seen’, was first found in southern Africa »

Britain Prepared for a Jobs Crisis, Just Not the One It Got

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Instead of a surge in unemployment, businesses are struggling to fill positions, presenting a new risk to the pandemic recovery.

The Department for Work and Pensions has doubled the staff it has to help others find jobs. Liz Maifredi manages five London job centers for the agency.Credit...Tom Jamieson for The New York Times
Empty beer taps in pubs, supermarkets low on Diet Coke, milkshakes missing at McDonald’s: It seems each new day in Britain brings a new notice of scarce products and services as businesses are waylaid by the country’s shortage of truck drivers and other workers.

The problem extends beyond the most visible parts of the economy. Job vacancies in Britain are about 20 percent higher than their prepandemic levels, and the need for workers has gripped nearly every occupation, including computer programmers, health care assistants and farmworkers.

Yet Britain also has nearly a quarter of a million more people unemployed and looking for work than before the pandemic. And that’s not counting the roughly one million people still furloughed— either not working or working part time while getting wage subsidies from the government. Many are likely to lose their jobs when the program ends this month.

The labor market, in short, is in a logjam: Employers have positions they need to fill, and plenty of people are looking for work, but the empty positions don’t match what people are prepared for or want to do. The United States has the same problem, and it’s threatening President Biden’s huge infrastructure-building plans. » | Eshe Nelson | Monday, September 13, 2021

Delaying Brexit border checks on food won’t prevent shortages, UK firms warn »