Government accused of shifting goalposts as it now says NHS tracing app will be ready ‘before our sun collapses into a white dwarf’

Boris Johnson’s bombastic claim of a ‘world-beating’ bespoke COVID 19 tracing app for the NHS being ready on June 1st, suffered a setback as the government quietly revised the launch date to some point before the end of the Solar system.

Simone Williams, spokesperson for Number 10, denied the new launch date was too vague and more aimed at avoiding embarrassment for the PM than being effective in fighting the pandemic.

“We most certainly did not set a purposefully unclear launch timetable just so the PM doesn’t have to face questions about yet another of his off-the-cuff promises turning to shit.

“The NHS tracing app, like all major government IT projects, has run into a few technical difficulties such as ministers who think email is newfangled.

“Boris Johnson wants the NHS to have the very best of British technology instead of having to buy off-the-shelf tracing apps from tech companies who made billions from creating user-friendly reliable software. Our app promises to be first class, world-leading, top of the range, game-changing and any other qualifier that is impossible to measure empirically.

“So it might take a bit more time than expected. The good news is that we might be able to roll it out at the same time as a vaccine, but don’t hold me to that.”

Although the government was reluctant to guarantee anything, it is understood that a lot of work is going on to ensure the new app will be compatible with the thousands of NHS computers still running Windows XP.

No, not Vista. Fucking XP!

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