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This Is Completely Unacceptable
The government of the United Kingdom identified a critical need: the NHS was critically short of respirators. They put out what isn’t exactly a Request for Quote. It is more like a Plea for Help.
We're looking for businesses who can support in the supply of ventilators and ventilator components across the UK as part of our response to #coronavirus. If you think your business can help, please find out more and register your details: https://t.co/WB0jKgw2EP
— Dept for BEIS (@beisgovuk) March 17, 2020
Into the fray plunged the design team at storied Gtech. What’s that? You never before heard of Gtech? Neither had I, but Brother @jamesdelingpole amended my ignorance.
Nick Grey, Owner of Gtech began working on the project after being contacted by Gareth Rhys Williams, Government Chief Commercial Officer, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
“At first I thought it was a hoax – being asked if I could assist in making up to 30,000 medical ventilators in as little as two weeks,” said Nick.
“When I realised that this was a genuine need I felt compelled to help”.
Nick spent Sunday learning how ventilators worked and on Monday tasked Gtech’s engineering and model making team to tackle the challenge. He also bought a ventilator off eBay and arranged for it to be collected first thing Monday morning.
Step 1: Blow, don’t suck. See? We’re halfway there already!
Gtech is well on the way to answering a desperate need.
But…
Notice anything unseemly about what I take to be the design team?
Not exactly a shining example of diversity, are they? I mean, one or more of them could be gay, I suppose, but do any of them dress gay? I think not!
Surely this kind of thing cannot be allowed in this day and age. How can you expect to get by on “getting the job done” without at least one hermaphroditic two-spirited little-person of color (or that should be “colour” I guess) on staff.
I think an investigation is in order.
Published in Humor
Well, the one guy does have his shirt tucked in.
They actually look like they are getting ready to work!
Yeah, that was a dead giveaway. Also the plunging neckline.
I started tucking my shirt in but that’s mostly so the belt buckle doesn’t dig into my stomach so much.
Funny how when it comes to life-saving matters, suddenly the importance of meeting your quota of blind Muslim lesbians and trans women with a speech impediment seems less attractive.
Two things:
I always tuck my shirt tail in. I have for 45 years. It’s hard to carry concealed if you do so.
I don’t trust the smile of the guy on the left.
During The Blitz Limeys begged average Americans to send over any kind of firearm that would go bang to be issued to the home defense force. Goes to show what happens when government controls healthcare…and firearm ownership.
Well, especially not in the super-woke UK.
This GTech ? The one that makes vacuum cleaners and ebikes and garden machines and “massaging beds?” I guess appliance engineering is appliance engineering.
The funny thing is, the groups I have worked before usually have been pretty diverse. It never seemed to be by design. It just worked out that way.
Calling Sir James Dyson. Hello?
Inventor of the Dyson Air Blade, the hand dryer that actually dries hands? Genius.
I might have learned something new about myself today…
Yeah. I never have more than the top button unbuttoned.
Not to Stephen King. He was whining a few days ago that Trump’s response team was all old white males.
They actually weren’t, but why point that out to a man making a genuinely stupid and vapid observation. Especially an Old. White. Male. Dude is evidently suspicious of his own kind.
As opposed to what? The Democrat party’s singular choices for Presidential candidate in 2020? How stupid are these people, really? (Don’t answer that.)
That was exactly what I thought when I saw his comment. Who even thinks like that? So, I figured I’d give it a try.
Hope my brain goes back to
normalthe status quo.It’s the UK. Diversity means one of them is Welsh. If gay, that’s a bonus. ;)
If he were still with us, I could ask my English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh grandfather about that.
He’d probably just throw something at my head, though.
I love the Welsh. And the English/Scottish/Irish. But they do have their issues with each other, yes? I at least know to call anyone British is a minefield. Or to call anyone English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh, if one prefers “British.”
Oi.
As I understand it, the English/Scottish contingent’s self-identification mostly depended on who was asking and how tough they looked. The Irish and the Welsh married into the clan later, over here. They came here voluntarily. The others were encouraged to leave.
The whole debate has seemed silly to me, But it’s real. I guess it’s like the race thing here.
Forgotten in the comments are “Where are the women”?
OMG! No Women! I’m sure there was too much “mansplaining” going on to insure an appropriate work environment. That noxious phenomenon happens in an engineering environment quite often and something really needs to be done! Of course I might be part of the problem in my practice of architecture that is closing in on a half of century I have never once worked with a female engineer except for female government plan checkers and actually have never met a female private sector engineer I could have worked with.
Women are far more common in software engineering than in most of the other disciplines. They are still outnumbered, though.
Sorry, Unsk, but I’ve pretty much lost any respect for architects and engineers.
For example, I’m bidding on a 300,000 sf tilt job. I got Addendum 2 the other day. They had three chances to do a decent job with the addendum: they could have included a narrative telling us what the changes were, they could have clouded the changes, or they could have sent only the sheets that were changed. They did none of these. It’s like they don’t even know what their job is. If I were a GC instead of a lowly sub, I’d say that I wasn’t having anything to do with the addendum until they at least clouded their changes.
And it gets worse every year. I tease the millennial estimator we have in the office that the drawings get worse every year. I’m retiring soon, but he’ll have to deal with worsening drawings for the rest of his career.
What means, “clouded the changes?”
Never mind. Google told me.
Well, the problem is, the best female engineers are Cardassian.
(hi there, @jameslileks !)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7VtDaQE6sU
@unsk, if you never worked with a female private sector engineer, how do you know you couldn’t work with the ones you met? What clued you in?