Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Background report to the Leicester lockdown.

https://labourbehindthelabel.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/LBL-Boohoo-WEB.pdf

Awful :/

They were in the news before, they didn't let people distance enough in their warehouses.

Sigh. Another industry rife with abuse, and it shows getting items made in the UK isn't even a guarantee of good working conditions.

they didn't let people distance enough in their warehouses.

Generally not possible with the majority of the industries nowadays, I bet you there’s little to no provision for employees.

Where my partner work they changed to a 2 shift model with cleaning inbetween for production.

Other places at least there is PPE/distancing (though even with that we had an outbreak in a meat plant in NI, but they at least follow guidelines) but this lot doesn't seem to try at all.

It is not easy and there are costs for sure, but if you lead as a supplier surely people understand? Some others openly communicate about delays.

On that note...hope your where you work is OK. It is not hard with people wearing masks? As there's no lipreading.

Meanwhile, Boohoo's owner enjoys a net worth of £1bn.

Boohoo has generated £5bn+ of wealth for it's shareholders. Its not just about the name at the top of the tree.

I'd never heard of Boohoo before this story.

On that note...hope your where you work is OK. It is not hard with people wearing masks? As there's no lipreading.

I just ignore them and let the hearies deal with it.

Boohoo are masters of targeted marketing

Fair enough, hopefully your employer supports you.

Are you tempted to say something like: "Go, my hearies, your services are required..."? :)

Boohoo has generated £5bn+ of wealth for it's shareholders. Its not just about the name at the top of the tree.

Is this meant to be a defence of their employment practices, as they are 'generating wealth'? Sorry if I have misread this.

You aren't the target market for polka dot dresses and boob tubes? ;)

I don't get plagued by their ads either, I must not fit their target audience.

I read it as more "it's not just the owner to blame here".

1st July and finally I get access to geography,age,gender level data.

You aren't the target market for polka dot dresses and boob tubes? ;)

No, I'm not, boohoo. *cries*

I don't get plagued by their ads either, I must not fit their target audience.

Boohoo are masters of targeted marketing

I don't see many ads on-line because of various Javascript and ad blockers, so I probably wouldn't have seen them even if I'd been targeted.

Anyway, shame on the company if the allegations about working conditions, not even so much the alleged coronavirus practices, are true.

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/01/germany_helping_uk_contact_tracing_app/

Germany will help the UK with the Covid app.

I think that must be England as the NI tracing app was developed with Ireland (Rof), Wales/Scotland may do their own thing as well (not sure)

No, was pointing out that the billionaire owner of the company only owns 9% of it and the other shareholders should bare some of the responsibility for the conduct of the business.

Yup, was more that the "owner" actually has a minority stake and there is a complicated relationship between board and shareholders which defines how "responsible" a company is.

Fair comment.

The pillar 2 testing / results debacle is insane. It seems we actually couldn't be further from having a "world class track and trace" system. Somehow, officials in Leicester only learned they had 90% more positive cases than they thought 11 days after Hancock said they might have a problem.

FT article here - wasn't paywalled for me today, but seems a bit random.
https://www.ft.com/content/301c847c-a317-4950-a75b-8e66933d423a

I'd been reassured recently that our borough was averaging less than 1 case a day over the past couple of weeks. It appears that's absolute crap and there is no way to see how many positive cases from randoms in the local community have been cropping up. Why is the government continually publishing meaningless numbers? The ONS needs to give them an absolute kicking for this.

The article I've linked still doesn't make complete sense, as the final para seems to suggest local authorities did have access to this data via some dashboard, but I can't square that with the fact no one seemed to be actually using it. What an absolute shit show.

Jen Williams thread on Pillar 2 worth a read...

https://twitter.com/JenWilliamsMEN/status/1278228394136788992?s=19

This is a bloody scandal. 11 days is an age in this pandemic. Leicester council should sue the government.

I got access to the data today. It's fucking useless.

I've finally tracked down the publicly available dataset - If anyone is interested, the 'figure 9 tab' in this spreadsheet is the one that apparently gives you Tier 1&2 positive test rate per 100,000 pop by local area.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/896777/Weekly_COVID19_report_data_current.xlsx

Yesterday was the first time they published this data. I'm reassured to see that over here in Kingston we're right towards the best at 1.1 per 100,000, which means we did have somewhere around 2 positive tests in the week of the 14-20 June. Actually looking at what was previously published, we had no new cases that week (Tier 1) so all the new cases were in Tier 2. Not sure how much I trust the new stats though. Some have serious questions over how London boroughs in general seem to be doing unexpectedly well.