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Getty imagesOver the years, we have reported from the so -called outside Cobra meetings,
This is where the collection of senior ministers and officials to coordinate the emergency response to a crisis in Central London, Cobr means Cabinet Office Briefing Room.
None of us has ever been inside. And no one has been broadcast from inside before, till now. The BBC newscast podcast was invited to take a look.
Mobile phones, cameras and other electronic gizhmos surrendered, we squeezed along the narrow corridors and the bottom ladder, including a bit of the building which was the tennis court of Henry VIII.
The main, window -free room is a nice inch thick behind a white metal door.
We accepted each other on the fact that we were ready to be very low – perhaps, after years of imagining these rooms, they would feel like another office.
But they are not. Somehow they leave you with a permanent impression of gravity of decisions taken here.
A long rectangular table dominates the main room. The chairs run on both sides, with a chair on its semi-west head.
When the Prime Minister is not far away in 10 Downing Street, he addresses the cabinet, he is the primus inter pass, first, sitting among his ministers.
There is no such subtlety here: the chair of the meeting, so often the Prime Minister, is undeniably central character.
Straight forward, the entire back wall of the room is taken by a screen. Vishal monitors also hang on both other main walls.
A digital clock tells us the time here, the time in Washington DC and the time room in New Delhi was recently used. Air India Jet related aircraft accident Flying from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick.
First of all, the government art collection seems to be out of place on the wall on the wall, but after a few minutes in this window -free room you can see why the stressed minister can appreciate each other or two cool.
Some corridors are a distant national status center or Sitcen.
The civil servant who runs it is a boy called Roger Hargravas.
He and his team recently collected a pride on what he has gathered.
The epidemic changed everything: brutally exposing, before the very low, inadequate nature of contingencies, preparations and coordination in some position Kovid’s scale,
Perhaps Kovid is expected to interrogate and come to others, the Whitehall is clearly eager to make the case up to make up its game.
But what can be lies around the next corner?
“There is a risk in all this that you prepare perfectly for the final war,” Pat McFaden, the senior minister here, clearly accepts.
In other words, you learn the lessons of the final crisis and then the next one, which is completely different, you again flooring all.
We are talking to McFaden in the main briefing room, as it announces plans for the national testing of the government’s emergency alert system – where most of the 87 million mobile phones in the country get a message at the same time.
The next test will be held on Sunday 7 September at 15:00 BST.
The minister said, “It is a country-wide counterpart of a person who tests his fire alarm or his smoke alarm. It has been developed in recent years. It is a really valuable system of communication between the government and the public in emergency situations.”
CountryIn the national status center, the data is at the center of data operation.
Our modern, digitized world produces its Oodles and this place has access to a cat, lots in real time.
We are shown how you can think of dataset on almost anything, and then one can overlade each other in response to a particular event.
McFaden says, “The way we think we have changed about vulnerability. Kovid has highlighted a lot of cracks in the society which were most seriously affected.”
“So in the position center, we have this vulnerability map that now when there is an emergency situation, we would have a better idea of who really needs help, which is completely dependent, which is probably less capable of doing things on our own.”
How is one of those maps compiled?
“Okay, for example, energy companies will have a register of their weakest customers, those people you want to re -join first or the people you know that they have disconnected.
This entire place feels like the government at its most original, its ratio: None of the common Yah Boo Party politics, but a group of people is trying to protect us or provide support in the most frightening situations.
They are very facts that he told us that he feels that he has learned lessons of recent years.
But permanently unimaginable question is whether they will come forward.
