The Chicago Bears play at Soldier Field.
1. Has Feld in the name.
2. Is provocatively militaristic.
3. Chic implies criticism of scruffy people.
4. Ago refers to the past when things were bad.
5. Bears anthropomorphises nature.

Whatever

Here, enjoy getting angry.

[Link]

How dare the UK invest in R&D and becoming an innovation led science superpower as part of its recovery programme. Should just carry on doing whatever it does, that's the best way innit. Silly Sunak:

'The most powerful plan for sustainable growth is to position the UK to fully benefit from the incredible scientific and technological change the world is seeing. That’s why we’re increasing public funding in R&D to £20bn to enhance our world leading strengths in AI, life sciences, quantum computing, financial services, and green technology.'

Now, if you are looking for billions wasted, the responsible Parliamentary Committee made this statement:

The Department for Health & Social Care (DHSC) lost 75% of the £12 billion it spent on personal protective equipment (PPE) in the first year of the pandemic to inflated prices and kit that did not meet requirements – including fully £4 billion of PPE that will not be used in the NHS and needs to be disposed of.

Still, those inflated prices must have helped someone, eh?

First, I did not say I won't review how well they have done the work and call for improvements. I just won't second guess them whilst they are doing their work unless an opinion is needed or requested

Second, whose job do you think I am second-guessing here? I suspect the NHS is quite good at procurement albeit there is always room for improvement. But who should I tell to stop doing what they are doing?

I'll give you a clue, here is what the Government has said:

The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 saw the total disruption of global PPE markets. Demand for PPE skyrocketed, leading to huge price inflation and limited supplies. Normal market dynamics ceased to exist, and with them our NHS procurement procedures. It was essential that government adapted its approach to sourcing PPE for health and social care frontline workers, moving extremely quickly where necessary and taking carefully considered risks with new suppliers where appropriate, in order to secure vital supplies in the teeth of stiff competition all around the world.

To save lives, we focused our efforts, resources and attention on sourcing PPE. We continue to stand by the efforts we made at the height of the early pandemic to prioritise and protect our staff in the frontline. In order to secure the PPE needed by the NHS, in the quantities and to the timescales required, we adopted an entirely new ‘open-source’ approach to procurement.

A small proportion of offers – approximately 430 of the 24,000 – were processed through a ‘high priority referral’ route.

The wasted money on PPE is somewhat annoying but at the same time you have to think back to the mayhem that the pandemic caused.
Getting stuff was difficult and as such it had to be sourced at any price.
I know that "what's her face" took advantage and she and anyone like her should be hung, drawn and quartered - whichever party they are from.
This constant blaming of Ministers for every mistake is just crap and wrong.
Matt Hancock is hardly my favourite person but do you really think he phoned up suppliers and ordered stuff.
He was undoubtedly involved a high level but I am sure the order was to get stuff and worry about the details later and I for one don't blame them,.
The ones I blame are the profiteers of the tragedy - an utter disgrace even in my politics.
I am in an industry that needed PPE at that time and I had to overpay by anything up to 500% to get what I needed - sometimes even more.
Government contractors and suppliers rip us off every minute of every day - they are allowed to of course - so this was an ideal time to make much hay and look forward to an early retirement.

Looking into Stanford University’s ‘Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative’, which is one element of their ‘Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Action’, provides highly entertaining reading.

They even seem to be intent on suppressing the jargon that their own cohorts regularly use. Preferred pronouns is out, Trigger Warning is out. Victim is out - you have to use “person who has experienced … “. Practically all colours are problematic. The most bizarre seems to be Grandfather, which should be replaced by Legacy as “grandfather has its roots in the ‘grandfather clause’ adopted by Southern states to deny voting”. [If you have grandchildren, insist that they address you as Legacy, or perhaps Leg for short.]

You can read the full list of nonsense is the attachment.

Attachment: stanfordlanguage.pdf (428.98Kb)