SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

prateik said:
It depends on how involved he was and what the whole deal was worth..
If he was directly responsible for supplying kits that cost about a billion, a 2% fee isnt crazy.

if he didnt do that much or if the whole deal was 100m, then it sounds insane.
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This is what I'm thinking. We also need to think of the risks he has taken. He may be taking the complete risk with the PPE manufacturer, say if the NHS cancels the order. It is often the case with agents to work this way.

It is no where near like Football Agent fees.

Also how much was this profit? It's a shite news article used to trigger the public.
 
Andy_Cole said:
This is what I'm thinking. We also need to think of the risks he has taken. He may be taking the complete risk with the PPE manufacturer, say if the NHS cancels the order. It is often the case with agents to work this way.

It is no where near like Football Agent fees.

Also how much was this profit? It's a shite news article used to trigger the public.
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Give over. There were a litany of PPE providers that could have supplied kit and couldn’t get anywhere near the procurement process.

It’s corruption.

It’s like you don’t appreciate how much £21 MILLION is. £250,000 would be an unfathomable fee for a middle man supplying cheap disposables in a 9 month period.

There’s no possible world that a middle man is a high 6 digit value add in a contract moving disposables from China to the UK. 7 digits would be negligent. 8 is corruption.
 
Andy_Cole said:
So should he be working for free then? End of the day we wouldn’t have PPE if it wasn’t for his services. Left wing Caf at it again.
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golden_blunder said:
Ah come on, whatever way you look at it, he’s personally made an obscene amount of money akin to a football agent transferring a top footballer. It’s a shocking misuse of public funds
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I have less of an issue with this than with Tory party donors getting funnelled post of public cash for previously non-existent businesses. Whatever the moral implications, he appears to have cashed in on his ability to access Chinese supply chains which I suspect every government in the world was trying to access.

The fee is only ridiculous if the same kit could have been sourced successfully elsewhere for significantly less. Otherwise it's just the market rate.

If the government had two choices - pay him and get the kit, or don't and see it go elsewhere it seems they can't win.
 
RedRover said:
I have less of an issue with this than with Tory party donors getting funnelled post of public cash for previously non-existent businesses. Whatever the moral implications, he appears to have cashed in on his ability to access Chinese supply chains which I suspect every government in the world was trying to access.

The fee is only ridiculous if the same kit could have been sourced successfully elsewhere for significantly less. Otherwise it's just the market rate.

If the government had two choices - pay him and get the kit, or don't and see it go elsewhere it seems they can't win.
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Not an attack On you, but this is insanely naive.

A Spanish guy in Florida that trades in jewellery, has better access to latex glove and surgical gown suppliers, than the UK Government?

Think about what you’re saying. One inexperienced jeweller in America, has £21 million pounds worth of ability to buy latest gloves and plastic gowns.

If not corruption, then ineptitude. There is no third option.
 
How have China got less than 5k deaths through Covid? Am I looking at the wrong information?
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Give over. There were a litany of PPE providers that could have supplied kit and couldn’t get anywhere near the procurement process.

It’s corruption.

It’s like you don’t appreciate how much £21 MILLION is. £250,000 would be an unfathomable fee for a middle man supplying cheap disposables in a 9 month period.

There’s no possible world that a middle man is a high 6 digit value add in a contract moving disposables from China to the UK. 7 digits would be negligent. 8 is corruption.
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Not that I'm defending the process, the ethics, or the government. here, but £21m isn't a lot when you consider the volumes that is being purchased. 3.4 billion items have been delivered from March to September. If he owned relationships with factories contractually, and they have supply, the government have little choice but to go through the party (it's not uncommon in Far East sourcing to go through agents to factories).

It was a sellers market as well, so you're dictated by the market price, the market certainly didn't have a litany of providers that could deliver volume/scale that the Far East could unfortunately.
 
Eboue said:
appreciate the well wishes except for nimic. feck to socdem dogs.

on day 8 now and actually feel better than i did yesterday. cautiously optimistic.
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I'm a well wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm.

Get well, mate. Glad to see you're getting better.
 
Tibs said:
How have China got less than 5k deaths through Covid? Am I looking at the wrong information?
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Wrong if you mean 'truthful'. Right if you mean 'official'.

Those two things don't necessarily coincide when it comes to matters of saving face for the CCP.
 
Tibs said:
How have China got less than 5k deaths through Covid? Am I looking at the wrong information?
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Probably a mixture of 2 things, under reporting of deaths but also an oppressive govt that imposed extremely strict lockdown measures early on meant they got the virus under control and the moment they have outbreaks they jump on them hard. Mandatory mask wearing and high testing numbers with a compliant/controlled population. To be honest I wouldnt be surprised if their numbers were not far off accurate given how much control their govt has and how hard they went early on.
 
RedRover said:
I have less of an issue with this than with Tory party donors getting funnelled post of public cash for previously non-existent businesses. Whatever the moral implications, he appears to have cashed in on his ability to access Chinese supply chains which I suspect every government in the world was trying to access.

The fee is only ridiculous if the same kit could have been sourced successfully elsewhere for significantly less. Otherwise it's just the market rate.

If the government had two choices - pay him and get the kit, or don't and see it go elsewhere it seems they can't win.
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Come on, are you telling me the U.K. couldn’t get another middleman to get/source PPE for less than 20m consultant fee? What kind of world do you live in. It’s not acceptable. I wouldn’t be surprised that it comes out in the wash that he’s connected to someone in the Tory party.
 
F-Red said:
Not that I'm defending the process, the ethics, or the government. here, but £21m isn't a lot when you consider the volumes that is being purchased. 3.4 billion items have been delivered from March to September. If he owned relationships with factories contractually, and they have supply, the government have little choice but to go through the party (it's not uncommon in Far East sourcing to go through agents to factories).

It was a sellers market as well, so you're dictated by the market price, the market certainly didn't have a litany of providers that could deliver volume/scale that the Far East could unfortunately.
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They’ve basically bought it via a scalper than trying to get it themselves
 
731 deaths in Italy today.. Highest in months.. right up there with the first peak..

How bad are things there?
 
F-Red said:
Not that I'm defending the process, the ethics, or the government. here, but £21m isn't a lot when you consider the volumes that is being purchased. 3.4 billion items have been delivered from March to September. If he owned relationships with factories contractually, and they have supply, the government have little choice but to go through the party (it's not uncommon in Far East sourcing to go through agents to factories).

It was a sellers market as well, so you're dictated by the market price, the market certainly didn't have a litany of providers that could deliver volume/scale that the Far East could unfortunately.
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No. Those numbers do not stack.

You are suggesting that a jeweller in Florida, has better procurement routes than the NHS.

If he has connections that see his involvement be worth £21m, from a standing start, he should have been the head of NHS Procurement.

It’s corruption. Or ineptitude.

I do appreciate the fact that it all turned into the Wild West. But this is not a ‘Smile and Wave’ moment.

At the very least this should see an MP, in the house, explaining. An apology for wasting public funds through panic. Fcuk, I’d forgive that. I paid £80 for 5 PP3/N95 masks so my family members could have one.

But this shit can’t just coast by with the public just nodding.

Latex gloves. Plastic gowns. £21m admin fee.
 
golden_blunder said:
They’ve basically bought it via a scalper than trying to get it themselves
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If the factories have contracts with their agents, then there is no bypassing them, government or not. It's not like you can go into the Far East yourself and navigate procurement for the billions of items needed in a short two week period either. Especially in a situation where the market wasn't short of buyers for those particular products.

I'm not defending the process, but you don't turn up with a shopping list to asian factories like it's a pick & mix choice in a sweet shop.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Give over. There were a litany of PPE providers that could have supplied kit and couldn’t get anywhere near the procurement process.

It’s corruption.

It’s like you don’t appreciate how much £21 MILLION is. £250,000 would be an unfathomable fee for a middle man supplying cheap disposables in a 9 month period.

There’s no possible world that a middle man is a high 6 digit value add in a contract moving disposables from China to the UK. 7 digits would be negligent. 8 is corruption.
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Maybe you don't appreciate how much it is. The government's total PPE budget is 15 Billion. There are currently over 10,000 shipping containers full of this stuff sat in Felixstowe gathering dust. The numbers involved are astronomical.

Is it a ridiculous sum for getting in the middle of something the government could do themselves? Yes.
Is it a ridiculous sum if he can divert a shipment the Chinese supplier was planning to send elsewhere? No.

Nobody knows why that figure came to be.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
No. Those numbers do not stack.

You are suggesting that a jeweller in Florida, has better procurement routes than the NHS.
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At factories levels, it's highly possible, if he tied up contracts with the factories as an agent (I deal with multiple agents from 3-4 factories in the Far East). The NHS procurement function would of exhausted all their known routes quickly. To get the volumes they needed, considering the global demand, they would have gone down non-traditional routes. Especially when other countries governments were stepping in to do the negotiating most likely.

UnrelatedPsuedo said:
If he has connections that see his involvement be worth £21m, from a standing start, he should have been the head of NHS Procurement.

It’s corruption. Or ineptitude.

I do appreciate the fact that it all turned into the Wild West. But this is not a ‘Smile and Wave’ moment.
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Based off what I've read of your posts on this topic, I don't think you understand procurement, let alone NHS procurement, and more so when products are in global demand. This wasn't a market stall of people trying to sell their PPE, they could literally sell it to the highest bidder. The products were more commoditised than some consumer electronic products, hell most of the mobile phone grey market suppliers I used to deal with switched quickly into PPE in February as they saw their markets winding up.

UnrelatedPsuedo said:
At the very least this should see an MP, in the house, explaining. An apology for wasting public funds through panic. Fcuk, I’d forgive that. I paid £80 for 5 PP3/N95 masks so my family members could have one.

But this shit can’t just coast by with the public just nodding.

Latex gloves. Plastic gowns. £21m admin fee.
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I don't think anyone is just nodding, they procured 3.4 billion pieces of PPE in 6 months. £21m doesn't sound huge in the context of procuring large volumes of items, and on the market dynamics that existed back then.
 
11101 said:
There are currently over 10,000 shipping containers full of this stuff sat in Felixstowe gathering dust. The numbers involved are astronomical.
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Felixstowe is a potential disaster waiting to happen, I've got 10 containers sat there waiting to be processed.
 
prateik said:
731 deaths in Italy today.. Highest in months.. right up there with the first peak..

How bad are things there?
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Not too bad yet. I had to get winter tyres fitted today and the roads were almost as busy as normal. It's only when working hours finish and everything is closed that you notice the empty streets. Last time it was focused in one place, now it's more spread out. For us in the previous epicentre the second wave is ok so far, but maybe the rest of the country feels differently.

I saw somebody or other from the government saying we're now at the top of the curve and 10th December would be the peak of deaths, so the cases should start to decline a week or two before that.
 
F-Red said:
At factories levels, it's highly possible, if he tied up contracts with the factories as an agent (I deal with multiple agents from 3-4 factories in the Far East). The NHS procurement function would of exhausted all their known routes quickly. To get the volumes they needed, considering the global demand, they would have gone down non-traditional routes. Especially when other countries governments were stepping in to do the negotiating most likely.



Based off what I've read of your posts on this topic, I don't think you understand procurement, let alone NHS procurement, and more so when products are in global demand. This wasn't a market stall of people trying to sell their PPE, they could literally sell it to the highest bidder. The products were more commoditised than some consumer electronic products, hell most of the mobile phone grey market suppliers I used to deal with switched quickly into PPE in February as they saw their markets winding up.



I don't think anyone is just nodding, they procured 3.4 billion pieces of PPE in 6 months. £21m doesn't sound huge in the context of procuring large volumes of items, and on the market dynamics that existed back then.
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Stop attaching 3.4 Billion items to the £21m. They’re not linked. At all.

My mate runs the SE Asia division of Kuehne & Hagel.

Another friend is head of procurement for NZ Hospitals.

I have a half-decent second-hand understanding of procurement and logistics. I’m nowhere near an authority.

But £21m for a single stage procurement is a ransom. Not a fee.
 
F-Red said:
If the factories have contracts with their agents, then there is no bypassing them, government or not. It's not like you can go into the Far East yourself and navigate procurement for the billions of items needed in a short two week period either. Especially in a situation where the market wasn't short of buyers for those particular products.

I'm not defending the process, but you don't turn up with a shopping list to asian factories like it's a pick & mix choice in a sweet shop.
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Huh it’s not hard to find factories on Alibaba.com
Heck I registered as a company and got sent loads of catalogues from them. It’s not hard
 
Just note to say that PPE is still comparably pretty basic for most staff in the NHS. Coveralls China-style should ideally be the norm for all healthcare workers in all any form of contact with covid patients + hoods or N95 or FFP3. But we have to make do with visors, flimsy aprons and surgical masks for covid patients unless its in ITU or wards with aerosol generating procedures.

I mean not complaining too much, there was a time we were asked to consider recycling or reusing the stuff. And a lot of community based healthcare providers/teams had to source some of their own materials.

Can't put a number on what the right amount is for that provision is, but I'm not certain its been a personal protective panacea for the NHS.
 
Does anyone know what page in the thread that figure was posted which showed a cartoon representation of lockdowns and people who think lockdowns were useless because the death count was low?
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Stop attaching 3.4 Billion items to the £21m. They’re not linked. At all.
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I'm not trying to link them, it's getting context of the numbers. £21m when the country is spending £15bn on supply is not outrageous for supply of product in global demand.

UnrelatedPsuedo said:
My mate runs the SE Asia division of Kuehne & Hagel.

Another friend is head of procurement for NZ Hospitals.

I have a half-decent second-hand understanding of procurement and logistics. I’m nowhere near an authority.

But £21m for a single stage procurement is a ransom. Not a fee.
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If you have friends in all those high procurement places, then you'll understand that £21m isn't a huge sum of money in that procurement context for high demand products, volumes on a national/global level, and needed urgently.

The discussion for me is whether the NHS had the right procurement lines in the first place. It's well known that the NHS procurement framework prohibits competition even when it's not in pandemic mode. The wider issue was EU's competition laws were relaxed in the state of a pandemic, going the other way we would have had more rhetoric about red tape procurement stopping front line workers getting the PPE they need.

I have bigger issues with the Pestfix's of the world than brokers/agents of Far East factories. Considering the guy has clear links to fashion factories and was procuring gowns/gloves (not masks), the focus for me is on these new companies set up in the UK who were supplying goods that weren't even passing the basic checks to get it into the NHS. Money wasted for nothing.

golden_blunder said:
Huh it’s not hard to find factories on Alibaba.com
Heck I registered as a company and got sent loads of catalogues from them. It’s not hard
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If I can use an analogy, meant in the nicest possible way, what you've described is like taking a knife to a gun fight. Trying to procure on a national scale for billions worth of items, for rapid deployment, isn't as easy as signing up to Alibaba and paying for it via PayPal/Western Union.
 
@F-Red

I think we’re both getting a little protectionist of our views. We can disagree.

I see a £21m facilitation fee as a sign of ineptitude or corruption. You roll it up into the overall cost of a pandemic response.

You are 100% right if that fee saved lives.

I don’t think that fee benefited the country.

We probably never bridge that gap. I’m not saying I’m wrong or right, but I’ll stubbornly not concede any ground either.

Its all a bit fcuked and there’s no point the pair of us throwing excrement at each other.

I think my ultimate angry fall back is ‘Imagine if Labour did this’. That disparity of analysis and drama between Tory large scale feck up and Opposition low grade drama... it irks me.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
I think my ultimate angry fall back is ‘Imagine if Labour did this’. That disparity of analysis and drama between Tory large scale feck up and Opposition low grade drama... it irks me.
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I'm fine with your opinion, and I actually agree in some respects when you look at it in isolation, especially with the governments form. For me the £21m is them paying a market rate of a pandemic, and the PestFix issue is by far the more corrupt elements of procurement which need fully scrutinised and uproar.

Labour unfortunately would have been in the same boat in March, and would have been paying the same rates for procurement for gowns/gloves. Commoditised products don't discriminate by political leaning sadly.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Not an attack On you, but this is insanely naive.

A Spanish guy in Florida that trades in jewellery, has better access to latex glove and surgical gown suppliers, than the UK Government?

Think about what you’re saying. One inexperienced jeweller in America, has £21 million pounds worth of ability to buy latest gloves and plastic gowns.

If not corruption, then ineptitude. There is no third option.
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You might think that I am naïve. I have advised on contracts where agents and brokers have been paid significant sums (sometimes millions in commission over a few years) as part of ordinary deals for very ordinary textiles etc. It's not uncommon for successful people in those fields to make big money. There is even specific European legislation to deal with agency and similar types of agreements which protect people who act as introducers.

I don't know the ins and outs of this, but the article refers to his connections in China but is otherwise scant on detail. He clearly had contacts, probably from designing and flogging cheap jewellery produced in China and shipped around the world.

At the outset of the pandemic there was huge demand for PPE and limited supply. Like it or not, people who like this who can deliver (probably for a massive fee) will profiteer, in the same way that the Pharmaceutical companies will from the vaccine.

Your argument, as it stands is that it's lots of money and therefore it must be "corruption". It may well be (or indeed inept), but the article doesn't offer enough information to make that conclusion. All of these arrangements should be investigated properly, but the article itself doesn't even seem to clarify what the overall deal was worth so I'm not sure what the point of it is, other than to try and get the public riled with little context.
 
So I posted the below in the vaccine thread but it got lost as last message on the page. Anybody able to enlighten me.



Hypothetically, if the vaccine has mutated to not have an S protein and this was then found in a small percentage of people, would this be an absolute disaster for the vaccines?
 
golden_blunder said:
Come on, are you telling me the U.K. couldn’t get another middleman to get/source PPE for less than 20m consultant fee? What kind of world do you live in. It’s not acceptable. I wouldn’t be surprised that it comes out in the wash that he’s connected to someone in the Tory party.
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I have no idea, and seemingly neither does the person who wrote the article and that's largely my point.

Sadly, the world I live in is one where people who don't do a lot, get paid a lot because they have the right contacts and can put people over a barrel. I see it regularly in the field I work in, albeit on a smaller scale.

As I say above, all of these kinds of deals should be investigated but the procurement of PPE, which will save lives (or, more accurately cost lives if it's not obtained) was clearly vital. For the record, I think the Government have handled this whole thing appallingly, but I would have some sympathy if in a world where everyone is trying to get their hands on a limited supply of desperately needed items like this, they had to pay over the odds. If that was the case (and I don't know that) then I would actually say they probably made the right decision.

I hope all of these deals get properly looked into because its hard to conclude anything other than nepotism across the board. If it is that, fine.
 
F-Red said:
I'm fine with your opinion, and I actually agree in some respects when you look at it in isolation, especially with the governments form. For me the £21m is them paying a market rate of a pandemic, and the PestFix issue is by far the more corrupt elements of procurement which need fully scrutinised and uproar.

Labour unfortunately would have been in the same boat in March, and would have been paying the same rates for procurement for gowns/gloves. Commoditised products don't discriminate by political leaning sadly.
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Yep. I’m with you too on the internal award stuff like Pestfix. There’s clear line of sight to wastage. Through whatever means.

A Labour government casually paying £21m to an unknown entity would see a full court press from the Daily Mail, Sun, Express, Times, Telegraph...

The gap in response level is horrifying.
 
RedRover said:
As I say above, all of these kinds of deals should be investigated but the procurement of PPE, which will save lives (or, more accurately cost lives if it's not obtained) was clearly vital. For the record, I think the Government have handled this whole thing appallingly, but I would have some sympathy if in a world where everyone is trying to get their hands on a limited supply of desperately needed items like this, they had to pay over the odds. If that was the case (and I don't know that) then I would actually say they probably made the right decision.
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This is the thing. An acknowledgement of errors is a sign of good governance. That’s not happening.

Front foot this mess. Explain why it happened. Apologise. Tell the public why it won’t happen again.
 
gormless said:
Hypothetically, if the vaccine has mutated to not have an S protein and this was then found in a small percentage of people, would this be an absolute disaster for the vaccines?
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Quoting to increase visibility - is this possible through mutation, or do Corona bugs mutate in specific ways?
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Yep. I’m with you too on the internal award stuff like Pestfix. There’s clear line of sight to wastage. Through whatever means.

A Labour government casually paying £21m to an unknown entity would see a full court press from the Daily Mail, Sun, Express, Times, Telegraph...

The gap in response level is horrifying.
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Certainly agree with your last point.
Unfortunately, this government, which coined the phrase 'magic money tree' as a response to Labour spending plans, is spraying taxpayer money like there is no tomorrow. Some necessary, some not.
And many people have become de-sensitised to the widespread waste of money.
But just like Brexit, there will be a reckoning.
 
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