Blair government accused of Y2K cover up

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Exclusive: Blair government accused of Y2K cover up by Andrew Craig

Tony Blair's government stands accused of trying to deliberately mislead the British public over the readiness of the country's largest companies for the Year 2000 date change. Government Y2K body Action 2000 last week released selected highlights from its latest survey of British businesses into the preparedness of their IT systems for the millennium.

But Y2K guru Robin Guenier, representing independent group Taskforce 2000, today publicly accused the government of misleading the public by keeping secret the serious problems exposed by the survey and only revealing selective highlights.

Action 2000 reported last week that of 75 per cent of the FTSE 500 companies surveyed, 90 per cent were on course for Year 2000 compliance. But Guenier today told a packed house of 250 senior executives at the Regent Conference in London today that he had seen the unpublished figures, which paint a much darker picture.

The unpublished figures show that 20 per cent of FTSE 500 companies have not yet completed an IT inventory - the first step in checking for Y2K compliance - and that while 45 per cent have done an inventory, they have made little further progress, said Guenier.

"Why would a government body want to deliberately mislead us?" said Guenier, "If hundreds of businesses are lagging, surely it needs massive publicity."

Tony Blair has previously said it is necessary to be straight with the public about the state of progress, he added.

"Either the government doesn't understand the situation themselves, or it believes that openness could lead to public panic," said Guenier, "If we were in the last quarter of 1999, then fear of panic might be justified, but now the priority has to be to recognise facts," he said.

==============

Here is the crux of the matter. The government understands that panic is not a good thing. And they would dearly like to do what they can to prevent panic. However, they most assuredly either do NOT understand that there will be massive objective failures or they FULL WELL know it and are trying to cover it up because panic is inevitable and they are trying to forestall it.

It is ABSOLUTELY plain from the evidence that massive failures are a fait accomplit. The gross lack of progress must be covered up or spun into a tale that will lull the population to sleep. And Now, The cat is leaping from the bag. The government has deliberately mislead the population in an attempt to stave off the panic that they will have wildly exacerbated by not being truthful in the first place. Had they been honest, the panic could have been mitigated in large measure. Yes, there would have been problems. But the infrastructure would still have been intact, and they could have sorted it out with time to spare. Now, they are CAUGHT lying. And the population will realize that there was a reason for the lie. The reason is that they are in such critically bad shape, that panic is inevitable. They will, now, have caused exactly what they feebly tried to prevent by their lies.

There is little doubt that The Prime Minister's government has orchestrated a cover-up of the severity of the consequences.

They lied. Plain and simple. It is no longer a matter of them getting enough done. It can not be done and they know it. England is enscrewed. How long before the populataion panics? I don't know. But, I do know this....

Won't be long now.

Look, the game is up. England is allegedly one of the most prepared nations in the world, and look at them. They are falling apart at the seams, resorting to lying to the public. Caught RED HANDED.

I have STAUNCHLY maintained that the governments are lying through their teeth and that sooner or later the truth would come out and they would be caught.

C'mon flint, put a nice happy faced spin on this one, you lunatic.

http://webserv.vnunet.com/www_user/plsql/pkg_vnu_news.homepage?p_story=74268&p_date=29-JAN-99 Paul Milne If you live within five miles of a 7-11, you're toast.

-- Paul Milne (fedinfo@halifax.com), January 29, 1999

Answers

The trolls and pollyannas on this and other forums are nothing compared to what is coming IMO. It is going to get absolutely insane before the net goes poof. I believe a dis- and misinformation army is being mustered as we speak. Limber up your fingers-serious typing ahead for those who give a damn about the truth-I mean the ABSOLUTE truth. Best to ya'

-- Jeremiah Jetson (laterthan@uthink.y2k), January 29, 1999.

Love that e-mail address later than you think. And it is exactly that. If you are not provisioned and bunkered in by the time Clinton climbs on Air Force one for his summer vacation in late August at Marthas Vinyard you might as well not even bother.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), January 29, 1999.

Can someone give us a link.

-- Linda A. (adahi@muhlon.com), January 29, 1999.

Linda,

Apparently you did not read the original post very well. The link is right there.

-- Paul Milne (fedinfo@halifax.com), January 29, 1999.


http://webserv.vnunet.com/www_user/plsql/pkg_vnu_news.homepage?p_story=74268&p_date=29-JAN-99

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 30, 1999.


As a Brit I find this quite worrying, although I'm not so surprised. I thought Blair was making a half-hearted attempt to be open about the whole problem but this is obviously not the case.

It's common knowledge that all Police leave has been cancelled, and the Police and Army top brass are formulating joint plans for expected "trouble." One of the female ministers (Bucket!) blabbed too much about stocking up and she was immediately slapped down and retracted her statements.

And now we have this cover-up exposed.

It will be an interesting year.

Deano will be happy to know that I will go back to look after my elderly half-blind mum during the turmoil.

Andy

Two digits. One mechanism. The smallest mistake.

"The conveniences and comforts of humanity in general will be linked up by one mechanism, which will produce comforts and conveniences beyond human imagination. But the smallest mistake will bring the whole mechanism to a certain collapse. In this way the end of the world will be brought about."

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, 1922 (Sufi Prophet)

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 30, 1999.


Here is the rest of the article that Paul didn't print:

"Guenier also took the opportunity to try and dispel a few of what he called Y2K myths. Firstly the focus on midnight 31 December, 1999, as the time when the bug kicks in is wrong he said, adding that only about 5 per cent of failures will happen in that time.

Secondly, stories that home appliances like microwaves and video recorders will blow up are completely wrong, he said. Home PCs showing wrong dates are about the extent of the impact on the home, he added. Lastly he said he does not believe the view that Y2K will effect huge numbers of small businesses.

"There are under two million small businesses [in the UK] and the vast majority may have a problem, but it isn't necessarily that serious," he said."

Paul, why didn't you print ALL of the article?

-- Read it ALL (there's@more.toit), January 30, 1999.


Read it ALL!!!

Interesting I wonder what it means exactly:

"Lastly he said he does not believe the view that Y2K will effet huge numbers of small businesses.

"There are under two million small businesses [in the UK] and the vast majority may have a problem, but it isn't necessarily that serious," he said."

Seems a contradiction in terms there to me.

It's either that Y2K will not effect huge number of small businesses

-OR-

There are under two million small businesses and the vast majority may have a problem, but it isn't necessarily that serious.

MAY HAVE A PROBLEM, BUT IT ISN'T NECESSARILY THAT SERIOUS.

Doesn't sound to sure himself!!!!!!!!

-- Am (Reading@All.com), January 30, 1999.


Sounds like Guernier shares my view about small companies: that they are not in general computer-centric enough to be seriously impacted whether or not they prepare (ie if the worst happens, someone has to start burning the midnight oil on lots of paperwork that the computer used to do). Also that they typically use canned software: provided the can is a current product, remediation should largely consist of upgrading to the Y2K-fixed version.

It's big companies that get hit worst by Y2K in the first instance. Then, of course, the small guys suffer because they depend on the big guys for custom.

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), February 01, 1999.


I thought it was all inter-related I thought the big guys depended on the little guys/suppliers for their supplies to manufacture and produce their goods to then turn around to sell to even more little guys/suppliers.

Appears to be the case in the US. The big guys are threatening to cut off their little guys/suppliers if they're not Y2K compliant. Seems to me that if the majority of the little guys/suppliers are not going to be compliant the biggies are going to be up the creek trying to find any suppliers to replace the ones they cut off. I don't think you'll find too many biggies willing to deal with antiquated burning the midnight oil with pen and paper procedures in this fast paced technological world. Time is money. Mind you if the majority of their little suppliers computer systems go poof I guess the biggies will have to put up with antiquated measures for a while.

If it is going to be so easy for the little companies to remedy the situation when their computer systems do go poof after the event wouldn't it be even easier for them to do it before the event.

I think you'll find that the systemic nature of the technology that links everything to everything else cannot take the majority of little companies/suppliers going poof. Not in the US at any rate.

-- Carol (usa-uk@email.msn.com), February 01, 1999.



Carol:

Be careful not to fall for the noncompliant=dead error. So long as the big companies get their parts close enough to on time, they don't really care if the small companies are experiencing some strange but noncritical symptoms, or even if the small companies are working around the clock doing things the hard way while they get their problems straightened out.

We all know the story about the kingdom being lost for want of a nail. It's only a story.

We also know there's been a political battle going on in the UK between Taskforce2000 and Action2000, over the proper way to manage public opinion. Each side has a clearly visible bias. I find Taskforce2000's approach more palatable.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), February 01, 1999.


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