7 days 30 days All time Recent Popular
Did you catch our thread on the expanding reach of US company Palantir into UK public institutions? £91m+ awarded to the controversial Silicon Valley data-analytics outfit across government. Let's take a closer look at their work with the NHS...


examined the NHS contracts Palantir won under Covid19, trying to find out what aspects of our health data this private company has been given access to. But we couldn’t find out - key parts of the contracts are redacted.


At least £25.4m in contracts have been awarded to Palantir from UK Health Services. Their latest (Dec 2020) was worth up to £23m for them to continue deploying their Foundry data management platform within the NHS until

Foundry claims it can ‘source, connect, and transform’ data to ‘make operations analytical and analytics operational.’ It’s a big-data system that, in an NHS context, analyses patient data. More specifically, your

Palantir won their first NHS contract for just £1, supporting the COVID-19 datastore (Mar-June 2020); then a £1m, 4 month extension for the same work; then £908k for aiding the Test & Trace system (June-Sep
many points of this list boil down to MORE money for cops.

they’re asking for ONE BILLION DOLLARS in additional funding for the rape kits ALONE.


notice many of these points are about giving more money to the state so they can put more people in jail.

i’ve long said the concept of a “rape kit backlog” is copaganda. it helps cops look like they’re not the ones actively sabotaging rape cases AND justify get more $$ for an issue they don’t care about.

"as you know, this means that thousands of sexual offenders remain at large, free to reoffend"

Carceral.


Ah, yes, trauma-informed abuse 🤩

Notice how they use "strongest predictor of arrest" as a metric for success. So it isn't even about victims...its about the system throwing more people in jail. They keep talking about rapists being "at large#"
There’s a recurring misunderstanding/misinterpretation of public procurement numbers/costs, that does no one any good. If there’s going to be a debate let it at least be based on facts/reality not conjecture, not knee-jerk responses.

Another #thread 🙃

A few days ago I complained about a bad piece by @GuardianNigeria, in which they were busied themselves dividing distance by cost and then proceeding to make wild comparisons between rail projects. While also getting cost wrong in some cases.


The nuances of procurement, whether public or private sector, can hardly be accurately conveyed in your typical news headline, especially when headlines are driven mostly by virality ambitions. Always good to try and understand full picture before jumping to conclusions.

Important point: It’s very necessary for citizens to be able to assess public procurement projects for transparency & cost-efficiency. So I’m not saying don’t ask questions. Far from it. I’m simply saying all assessments MUST be based on a full picture, not headlines / conjecture

Take example of Super Tucanos. You’d read somewhere that Nigeria signed an almost $600m deal with the US Govt for 12 aircraft. Guess what our papers will do 😂

They’ll do their typical ‘dividing’ and say Nigeria paid $50m per aircraft. (The plane is not that expensive btw).
Today, a mezz thread!

Also, the answer to a few questions including:

Yesterday’s Value That Company!
Also, Why am I so dumb?
Finally, Why listen to me? 🤷‍♂️

Here we go!


A few years ago, I get a call from an acquaintance (we have several mutual good friends). He’s running a fast growing consumer finance company and needs cash...

It isn’t “I need $5 Million by Friday” but it’s close...


How fast are they growing? By the time we are negotiating the deal a week or 10 day later, the ask is up to $10 Million...


We did a little time travel yesterday on Value That Company, and I put you back in my shoes 3 years ago...

(Answer shortly)...
https://t.co/mNFNGgHiMI


The business is fascinating, but also extremely sensitive to assumptions, underwriting, etc...

Management is good, but also very aggressive which I’m not sure I love...

Worse, we don’t have the time to really dig into the numbers as extensively as I’d like... https://t.co/np5UPBmjnu