literally sitting here hysterically laughing and close to tears because the UK government missed over 16,000 covid 19 cases in the past week and therefore failed to trace them or publicize correct infection statistics BECAUSE THEY WERE USING EXCEL TO KEEP TRACK OF THEM AND THE SPREADSHEET RAN OUT OF COLUMNS

every week there's another news item that immediately tops the list of real life events that sound like an overwrought politics SNL sketch and every week all i can do is laugh because otherwise i'd be resorting to arson

this year is a cosmic joke and i am absolutely terrified of the punchline

i'm sorry i'm not done they have spent MONTHS now gassing up their ~incredible world beating test & trace system~ that they spent 12 BILLION POUNDS ON!!!! and it apparently consists entirely of a single fucking microsoft excel spreadsheet i can't fucking take this anymore i want off mr. johnson's wild ride

Wait THAT'S why those numbers were missed? Because of an EXCEL FILE?

YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT OUR ENTIRE PLAN FOR THE NEXT SIX MONTHS HINGES ON A FILE THAT I COULD HAVE BUILT?

Bloody hell, I thought it was something to do with server access and security, not a bloody excel file.

I'm sorry, they tried to use EXCEL? I'm so embarrassed for them

Oh, it gets dumber. Because there’s actually nothing wrong with entering the date into an excel sheet (it can feed info into various programs that analyze it, and is easy to use for newly hired admin staff who need minimal training to input the data into a usable format fast). BUT the thing is, the version of Excel they were using is 13 years out of date. Because the garbage firm the government hired -- who has been selling pandemic management contracts to their buddies’ firms instead of to companies with any fucking competency whatsoever -- hasn’t bothered to update their Microsoft Office software for over a whole ass decade. A WHOLE DECADE. Once again, we get fucked over because the people running the government are using their positions to fucking LEGALLY funnel money into private companies for their personal benefit.

oh but it’s worse than that!!! they were RECEIVING the data as csv files (good, sensible) and then COLLATING them INTO an Excel file (garbage, for this purpose!)!!!!!!!

my wife woke me up at 5.30am to tell me about this and I didn’t even yell at her I was so busy being outraged 

Why are we living in a parody of a global catastrophe.

Because not enough boomers and X-ers were paying attention to what politicians and businessmen were doing from about 1965 til now, and the Silent Generation was too goddamned scared of secret communists to question their leaders.