Bad news for Jackson Carlaw and Richard Leonard as Professor Alyson Pollock spoke of the English and Scottish systems on BBC Newsnight, last night:
We already know it’s [the centralised Serco system] getting into problems. The call handlers couldn’t log on today. There were crashes there in the system.
Scotland has got its contact tracing system in place and rolling out, and they’re doing it at local level.
I’m tempting fate here to go so soon here, but one day into the programme all is quiet in media coverage of the Scottish contact tracing system. BBC Scotland, the Herald and Scotsman are still beating the one-woman Nike kilt drum, and seem to have no one, not even his cousin, contacting Anas Sarwar to tell him about problems with contact tracing in Scotland.
In sharp contrast, Serco seems, once more to have thoroughly messed up things in England. Twitter is alive with signs of chaos:
In addition, Prof David McCoy, who was on with Gordon Brewer last week in an effort to prevent profs Bauld and Sridhar saying positive things about the Scottish Government, is in the Guardian damning the whole project. As last week the well-intentioned lefty prof does not seem to know that this is a devolved matter and refers to Serco running a combined UK show:
For an idea of how contact tracing works best, look to Germany. When interviewed about the country’s successful contact-tracing programme recently on Newsnight, the German minister of health described how the response had worked through the country’s federal structures and with the 400 different “communities” that are responsible for the track and trace system. The UK, on the other hand, started by pursuing a call-centre model run by Serco and staffed with minimum wage customer service employees. Recruitment agencies tasked with finding contact tracers are reportedly offering an hourly wage of £8.72 to staff with experience of “telephone or face-to-face customer services”. Viewing contact tracers as customer service call handlers may be a good business model for Serco, but I would like to know if a single public health specialist in this country thinks this was a good idea.
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
Brenda Steele predicted this 9 days ago:
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/05/20/want-to-bet-which-government-will-have-a-testing-system-up-and-running-first/
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But BBC Repressing Scotland will find someone, anyone, who shares a birthday/zodiac sign with a Nike rep, and yet—– WASNT TESTED !
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Serco, Have they not had problems before,
Rupert Soames
Group Chief Executive Officer
I am not suggesting anything but is he not a Tory.
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Brother of Nicholas Soames a Tory MP. They are grandsons of Sir Winston Churchill
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Serco – great pedigree – gives you confidence, but not about success.
“An offshore law firm regarded Serco, a company that runs sensitive government services in Australia and the UK, as a “high-risk” client, expressing concern about its “history of problems, failures, fatal errors and overcharging”, the Paradise Papers reveal.
Chief among the law firm’s concerns about Serco were allegations of fraud, the cover-up of the abuse of detainees, and the mishandling of radioactive waste….
….At the time, the company was under investigation by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office for billing the government for the electronic monitoring of criminals who were either still behind bars or dead. It paid back £68.5m to the government over the scandal, but was later cleared of fraud.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/06/serco-a-high-risk-client-with-history-of-failures-offshore-law-firm-found
In Scotland:”The Caledonian Sleeper was last week named by the Office of Rail and Road as the UK’s most-complained about rail service. Figures showed the train had 394 complaints per 100,000 journeys between July and September 2019 – up 221% on the same period in 2018.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/15/caledonian-sleeper-boss-to-quit-post-at-much-criticised-service
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The reason that we have public services is because of the historical failure of the private sector to do so effectively.
The private sector is very good at delivering profits for it’s investors and senior management and as such operates on short term programs (which is in line with the objectives of many politicians,especially those of a right wing persuasion).
England is reaping the “rewards” of their elected governments agendas but maybe this pandemic will convince some of the need for coordinated long term planning (only possible in state hands).
Maybe but I doubt it.
Time to move on!
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