The infrastructure, absolutely. A serious road, rail and air network, lots of companies with lots of experience and all the right gear and so on.
Where we fuck up is in the competency of the people in charge of awarding contracts.
Be it Grayling giving millions of pounds to a ferry company with no ferries owned or leased, or indeed any experience at all with ferries (and, wonderfully, with a T&Cs on their website copy-pasted from a pizza delivery site). As a wonderful finale, the government was sued by EuroTunnel because they awarded the contract without going through the proper process (which, of course, would have meant that the drawbacks of a pizza delivery business offering ferries might have been identified); we gave millions to a Ferry company incapable of delivering anything, and then millions to an actual transport company in compensation for breaking the rules on tendering.
Or be it KFC awarding their chicken distribution (despite warnings from people who knew) to a company with no experience in or facilities for cold food distribution, leading to KFC going literally out of business for a couple of weeks because they had no chicken in the stores.
We Brits have a competent infrastructure and the ability for the people in charge to award contracts to entirely the wrong parts of it.
I know it's guaranteed internet points to deride the current government, and the ferry thing is/was despicable, but I think it's highly unlikely they're going to put KFC in charge of logistical operations for the vaccine rollout.
Large PPE contracts were given to companies with no experience in making nor providing PPE, while companies with some experience were ignored. (Sometimes these contracts were awarded to personal contacts of ministers -- one was given to a bloke in the pub who happened to have the minister's contacts in WhatsApp.
The point being made is that you have to give out the contracts to vetted companies who can actually deliver on it. Just because there's a cheapest option that, on paper, seems to tick all the boxes, doesn't mean said option is actually any good.
Well thanks for chipping in [0]. Got anymore glib, smug responses to things that nobody said?
[0] I don't actually mean "thanks". That's childish and passive-aggressive of me, and I shouldn't do it. What I really mean is to suggest that I think you've added nothing to this and that you're addressing a point that nobody made, for reasons only you know. I would guess that it's some kind of hyperbole, and that what you kind of mean is "oh, for something as important as this, someone will do a proper job" which is at least a meaningful statement (if perhaps something of a triumph of hope over experience), but if I have to pick apart your snark to get the actual meaning, I'm doing your job for you. Can you not just write clearly, and state what you mean?
Both of the massive fuckups I listed were highly unlikely, but they still happened.
Yeesh, it was a light hearted joke about KFC because of the mildly amusing tangential link you made between the logistical problems of a fast-food retailer and a nationwide once-in-a-lifetime government backed vaccine rollout.
No, I didn't actually interpret your comment as a claim that KFC will be in charge of the rollout. There's no need to be aggressive.
Where we fuck up is in the competency of the people in charge of awarding contracts.
Be it Grayling giving millions of pounds to a ferry company with no ferries owned or leased, or indeed any experience at all with ferries (and, wonderfully, with a T&Cs on their website copy-pasted from a pizza delivery site). As a wonderful finale, the government was sued by EuroTunnel because they awarded the contract without going through the proper process (which, of course, would have meant that the drawbacks of a pizza delivery business offering ferries might have been identified); we gave millions to a Ferry company incapable of delivering anything, and then millions to an actual transport company in compensation for breaking the rules on tendering.
Or be it KFC awarding their chicken distribution (despite warnings from people who knew) to a company with no experience in or facilities for cold food distribution, leading to KFC going literally out of business for a couple of weeks because they had no chicken in the stores.
We Brits have a competent infrastructure and the ability for the people in charge to award contracts to entirely the wrong parts of it.