[Britse politiek] #116: Don't mention the border!

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Op maandag 5 oktober 2020 02:57 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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https://www.theguardian.c(...)london-2012-olympics

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Op maandag 5 oktober 2020 11:50 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:

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Waar halen ze die mafkezen toch steeds vandaan die denken dat het verstandig is om dit in het openbaar te zeggen.

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Op maandag 5 oktober 2020 17:19 schreef Ulx het volgende:
[ twitter ]

*Groan*

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Op maandag 5 oktober 2020 18:58 schreef Perrin het volgende:

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Dat is dan wel een prehistorische versie van Excel.

Oh ja en Excel

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A million-row limit on Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet software may have led to Public Health England misplacing nearly 16,000 Covid test results, it is understood.

The data error, which led to 15,841 positive tests being left off the official daily figures, means than 50,000 potentially infectious people may have been missed by contact tracers and not told to self-isolate.

PHE was responsible for collating the test results from public and private labs, and publishing the daily updates on case count and tests performed.

But the rapid development of the testing programme has meant that much of the work is still done manually, with individual labs sending PHE spreadsheets containing their results. Although the system has improved from the early days of the pandemic, when some of the work was performed with phone calls, pens and paper, it is still far from automated.

In this case, the Guardian understands, one lab had sent its daily test report to PHE in the form of a CSV file – the simplest possible database format, just a list of values separated by commas. That report was then loaded into Microsoft Excel, and the new tests at the bottom were added to the main database.

But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long – or, in older versions which PHE may have still been using, a mere 65,536. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed. That means that, once the lab had performed more than a million tests, it was only a matter of time before its reports failed to be read by PHE.

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PHE had set up an automatic process to pull this data together into Excel templates so that it could then be uploaded to a central system and made available to the NHS Test and Trace team as well as other government computer dashboards.

The problem is that the PHE developers picked an old file format to do this - known as XLS.

As a consequence, each template could handle only about 65,000 rows of data rather than the one million-plus rows that Excel is actually capable of.

And since each test result created several rows of data, in practice it meant that each template was limited to about 1,400 cases. When that total was reached, further cases were simply left off.

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Op maandag 5 oktober 2020 18:58 schreef Perrin het volgende:

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Dat is dan wel een prehistorische versie van Excel.

Oh ja en Excel

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Op zondag 4 oktober 2020 12:10 schreef zwelgje76 het volgende:
[ twitter ]
Oh, de UK government geeft nu ineens aan dat Brexit kosten met zich mee gaat brengen voor de chemische industrie. Maar ja, dat is volgens hen dan ook het onvermijdelijke gevolg van het verlaten van de EU. Dat hebben ze dus gemakshalve niet voor het referendum vermeld.

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Op dinsdag 6 oktober 2020 10:08 schreef IkStampOpTacos het volgende:

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Die uitleg ook. Ja het kost geld maar dat is alleen maar goed want nu gebruiken ze echte 'science' .

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City of London's Brexit Departures Are Speeding Up

Whether there’s a Brexit trade deal or not, the big investment banks are shifting significant resources to the EU.

Since Britain voted in 2016 to quit the European Union, there has been a fierce debate about the harm this will do to the City of London. Pessimists warned that losing unfettered access to the single market would force banks to move trillions of dollars in assets out of the world’s leading financial hub. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would go, the Cassandras said.

The reality has been more difficult to discern. The finance industry’s move to the continent has been piecemeal, and Brexit preparations have been complicated by the onslaught of the pandemic. Indeed, the management of the virus and the demands of home-working during lockdown mean some firms have had to slow their Brexit planning.

Unfortunately for London, one can still discern a shift in direction — amid all the fog of the Covid-19 war — that may support the Brexit doomsayers’ case. As Britain and Brussels embark on the final stage of talks to determine their future trading relationship, the trickle of resources moving away from the City is turning into a steady stream. The biggest investment banks have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the midst of a global recession to lease real estate on the continent, while relocating activities and jobs to set up standalone operations in the EU.

Although a single European rival to London may not emerge for some time, if at all, the shift is already posing questions about London’s future role in global finance — and about Britain’s coffers.

Take JPMorgan Chase & Co. The biggest U.S. bank is moving the equivalent of $230 billion of assets from the U.K. to its EU hub in Frankfurt, Bloomberg News has reported. That represents one-tenth of the Wall Street giant’s total assets and more than a third of the assets it holds in the U.K., its latest accounts show. About 200 employees are moving to continental Europe in what one executive described as a “first wave” of relocations.

The potential impact on JPMorgan’s revenue is even more striking. In a recent interview with Bloomberg Television, the bank’s top European executive, Viswas Raghavan, said 25% of the wholesale revenue generated by the firm in the U.K. could be headed elsewhere. “It’s a reasonable start,” he said.

This sense that a quarter of the City’s investment bank business might be in play is shared by other London financiers involved in Brexit preparations. Morgan Stanley is looking for a new headquarters in London that could be 25% smaller than its current space there.

Where larger firms go, smaller ones will follow, as will the ecosystem of lawyers and consultants around them. For a country that derived 12.3 billion pounds ($16 billion) in corporation tax from financial services in 2019 — 22% of all government receipts — the stakes are phenomenally high.

As things stand, next year financial services firms in the U.K. will lose their “passport” for selling their services in the EU. Assuming the two sides agree on a deal (still a big assumption), the City firms will probably have to rely instead on a system of “equivalence.” In that scenario, the EU would be able to decide unilaterally whether the U.K.’s rules are close enough to its own regulations to allow finance industry access.

Even if granted, an equivalence regime will leave firms with too much uncertainty about their long-term access to the EU, giving them little choice but to maintain a continental base.

What’s more, Europe is desperate to chip away at British dominance. The European Securities and Markets Authority will let London’s clearing houses sell services into the EU after Dec. 31, but it’s also planning a “comprehensive review of the systemic importance” of the industry, which could see that permission removed. Clearing houses play a critical role in safeguarding financial stability, as well as managing collateral for buyers and sellers of derivatives. The U.K.’s stranglehold on clearing euro swaps is of particular concern to the EU.

London’s position as the biggest investment-management center after New York is also uncertain. ESMA wants to limit EU-based funds delegating portfolio management to teams outside the bloc, including the U.K. About 90% of the assets under management in EU funds are delegated in this way.

The City of London’s dominance in Europe, underpinned by the deregulation of the 1980s and a favored legal system, isn’t yet threatened, and forcing the creation of a European rival could backfire, as my colleague Lionel Laurent argues. But the direction of travel has been set. Unless London can draw business from elsewhere, the City won’t be quite the destination it once was.

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Op dinsdag 6 oktober 2020 15:58 schreef bedachtzaam het volgende:
But what you may not know:
It looks quite different to way it did before, inc. *big* amendments to part on N.Ireland #Protocol...

[ twitter ]

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and section 6(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998 does not apply in relation to the making of regulations under section 44(1) and 45(1)

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No court or tribunal may entertain any proceedings for questioning the validity or lawfulness of regulations under section 44(1) or 45(1) other than proceedings in a relevant claim or application.
...
The jurisdiction and powers of a court or tribunal in relation to a relevant claim or application are subject to subsections (1) and (2).
...
but does not include the Convention rights within the meaning of the Human Rights Act 1998

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Pound sinks as EU bets UK will back down in Brexit talks

The pound slipped in mid-day trading in London following reports that the European Union is betting that the UK will back down on previous Brexit demands, resulting in the bloc having no plans to offer concessions ahead of next week’s Brexit deadline.

The pound fell sharply against the euro (GBPEUR=X), dropping by 0.3% at around 12:20pm in London. It also headed down against the dollar (GBPUSD=X) by 0.3%.

The EU intends to allow Brexit talks to drag out until November or December, beyond the 15 October deadline, according to Bloomberg. The report also states that the EU may even take a chance on Johnson pulling the plug on the deliberations rather than compromise on its red lines, the news agency said, quoting a senior EU diplomat. The high-stakes strategy was confirmed by a second EU official.

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On Wednesday, European Commission sources also confirmed that its Brexit team's offices are protected by fingerprint scanners, tighter security measures than those deployed at any other department, which are accessible for staff with approved passes.

According to the Telegraph, the ramping up of security comes amid fears of British spying in Brussels, which is believed to be an espionage hotspot, with the EU, its 28 member states and Nato all having a significant presence in the Belgian capital.

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The government’s ambition to “level up” the nation by providing next-generation fibre broadband to every home by 2025 is likely to be missed, unless issues including pricing and concrete plans on reaching remote towns and villages are addressed, according to a new report.

Addressing the UK’s status as a global laggard in rolling out gigabit speed broadband was a key promise of Boris Johnson’s election manifesto. The huge demand for reliable, high-speed internet connections as millions moved to home working during the coronavirus pandemic has added further impetus to hit that target. Only 14% of UK homes have access to full-fibre broadband, compared with up to 80% in many developed countries.

A new report from the Social Market Foundation thinktank has warned that the 2025 target will be missed without swift action from government. This includes clear plans on how its £5bn fund will ensure hard to reach places do not get left behind.

https://www.theguardian.c(...)adband-in-every-home

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Op dinsdag 6 oktober 2020 23:16 schreef zalkc het volgende:

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Dat is ook wel triest, dan is je huis zeker op het elektranet aangesloten als je licht hebt van de straatlantaarn voor de deur?

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Op dinsdag 6 oktober 2020 23:13 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:
Dit is ook wel een aardige:
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Even ter nuancering, wat in het VK fiber heet is niet hetzelfde als wij glasvezel noemen, hier glasvezel is wat er in huis komt, in het VK mag je het Fiber noemen als de buurtcentrale op fiber aangesloten is, niet je huis.

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Op woensdag 7 oktober 2020 01:10 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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Labour beloofde in 2019 gratis full-fibre broadband voor iedereen, over heel het land, betaald door een tax op internet giants. Maar de plannen leken erg optimistisch (weinig realistisch). Zij beloofden een investering van ruim 20 miljard, de National Infrastructure Commission schatte de kostprijs op 30 miljard (gratis toegang niet inbegrepen).

https://www.theguardian.c(...)hind-other-countries

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Op woensdag 7 oktober 2020 01:27 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Ik weet het en dat was ook een vrij onzalig idee maar die hadden tenminste wel een wat realistischer kostenplaatje voor ogen.

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Op dinsdag 6 oktober 2020 23:13 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:
Dit is ook wel een aardige:
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Even ter nuancering, wat in het VK fiber heet is niet hetzelfde als wij glasvezel noemen, hier glasvezel is wat er in huis komt, in het VK mag je het Fiber noemen als de buurtcentrale op fiber aangesloten is, niet je huis.

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Op woensdag 7 oktober 2020 09:11 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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De Tories kunnen de industrie voor de kosten laten opdraaien, in ruil voor hogere prijzen voor de consument...

Het blijft alvast een dure zaak, Die schatting van 30 miljard komt neer op 1090£ per huishouden.

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Op woensdag 7 oktober 2020 12:20 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Je moet de infrastructuur en de topografie van het VK ook in ogenschouw nemen, natuurlijk, zelfs grote steden voorzien van glasvezel is uitermate complex en het VK heeft veel oude steden waar graven en kabel trekken geen sinecure is.

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Op woensdag 7 oktober 2020 12:28 schreef Hyperdude het volgende:

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Ze kunnen daar ook wel een Infrastructure Week gebruiken.