Quote Originally Posted by Muddy Retriever View Post
Testing is obviously much improved since then but is seemingly not up to scratch. One has to ask why given that reportedly £12 billion has gone into Track and Trace, a staggering sum. I read one article this morning where the author said that it wasn't right to say that Track and Trace hadn't achieved anything. In fact, it had actually made HS2 look like relatively good value for money. Quite some feat.
It seems to me that this sort of thing is hardly helping:

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...alary-12104028

Some executives from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) helping the government set up and run its testing system are being paid day rates of around £7,000 - equivalent to an annual salary of around £1.5m.
[...]
The revelation is the latest evidence of the expense of the government's testing scheme, which is budgeted to cost £12bn this year - making it one of the most expensive government programmes in recent years.
BCG is renowned as one of the most prestigious - and expensive - management consultancy groups in the world.
According to the documents, the government has paid BCG around £10m for a team of around 40 consultants to do four months' work on the testing system between the end of April and late August.

While £10 million is only a very small proportion of the total £12 billion, if you have £10 million here and £10 million there, pretty soon you're talking real money. Or, to put it another way, many a mickle makes a muckle.

Mind you, management consultants are usually well worth the money.