An utterly ridiculous approach to handling front-line human resources - they desperately need them, yet threaten to sack them whilst expecting them to work without proper protective equipment. What do these people have between their ears?
You know that things are out of control when the Daily Mail is telling the government to get a grip with it's headline. Fiasco, shambles, whatever next? It seems that the information about the country being short of chemical reagents hadn't been handed over to Chris Hopson, CE of NHS Providers. There he is on TV coming out with the same thing, when it was shown to be an out and out untruth.
I'm sure the UK government will learn from any mistakes made during this pandemic and ensure it is better prepared for the next ten years. It will certainly need to buy tens of millions of pounds of PPE equipment and other medical devices from UK companies to hold in store.
There has been some fairly hostile reaction to the fact that the French government has bought in a billion facemasks from China. The complaints are that there was a company that could make a million a day here in France, until the government allowed the company to be sold to an American outfit. The Americans promptly closed the factory here and took the machinery off to the far east. With 40 million facemasks being issued and used every week here, it is a great example how inward investment sometimes fails you when a country loses control.
The French and American owners of the company clearly realised it was financially unsustainable to manufacture in France. The manufacturing cost would be much greater than those made in the Far East. The loser would be the French health service wasting money on overpriced products. There is a supply security issue but this can be overcome by buying larger quantities in future in case of a pandemic repeat.
It might help if they stopped lying to the population for a start. It is a bit late to say that we will learn after they ignored the information coming from around the world to those who have died, yet might have been saved. The incompetence is untrue. Solution: Let's get another spin doctor into government to make the truth about our failure look less like we are lost.
Not true. I said some of the products have a limited shelf life so a government would need cooperation with a supply agency to rotate stock or be prepared to throw away out of date stock. I'm sure NHS Supply Chain can help along with leading UK manufacturers.
In the Tarn there is a town near where I used to live called Graulhet. It used to be a thriving centre for making leather products until China organised itself and made it uncompetitive simply because of the vast difference in labour costs.
There is a huge difference between leather goods and items required for the national good. This is where free market access fails totally. Lose your ability to produce your own equipment and you are at the mercy of others. USA prepared to pay more for masks than the UK, and where will the masks go? All this business about equipment becoming available in the future is not worth talking about, because when this crisis finishes the country will be bust, and start looking to reduce everything to a bare minimum again.
The French government will not subsidise a French business to produce facemasks in France once the pandemic is over. The French government will do exactly as the rest of the nations and build up a greater reserve stockpile. There was a reason why the business left in the first place, it is financially unviable.
Why did the Americans wish to buy it then? Glad to see that you are no longer trying to defend the lies coming out from your government by the way.
Two nuggets here: 1. Unless it is profit driven they won't manufacture 2. The Dail Mail is now saying it so I will change my line
The Yanks probably bought a company on its knees, cheaply, for the machinery and business contacts. The Americans would be the last people to invest in a labour intensive industry in France of all places. Employment costs in France are far too high but this also applies to anywhere in Europe, even Eastern countries.
Last night on BBC north west news following news at ten there was a brief report on a local council receiving the first government food parcels for the people who have been assessed as most vulnerable, the 1.5 million that we were told were going to be shielded and looked after. The council involved had expected delivery of 12229 parcels but received only 444. They opened up the boxes and showed a picture of the contents supposed to sustain the most highly vulnerable for a week. It contained, a large bottle of what looked like Ribena, a bag of tea bags, a bag of sugar, 1 tin of soup, 1 other tin (did not specify contents), 7 crunchies, 7 other chocolate bars and some biscuits. I know they announced that people would be receiving basic items only but their lies incompetence and callous nature could not really be made more plain by the picture of this food parcel.
