The cause wasn't that one switch. That was the trigger. But the cause was insufficiently robust DR processes or infrastructure. Contributing factors would include poor change management procedures. An event like this could be triggered for different reasons and that's what a fully tested DR is for. Something went badly wrong with their DR either in their processes (failover didn't work, wasn't tested, etc) or there was no allowance in the plan for some kind of data corruption.
You forgot to mention "they will do the work British people are too lazy to do". Apart from that your list of the usual excuses for replacing British workers with cheaper workers from abroad was spot on.
I've worked with lots of Indian IT workers (mainly ones that who come over here on intra-company transfers); some are good, some are bad, most are mediocre - same as the British IT workers I've worked with. Anyone who claims that nationality X are better at something than nationality Y frankly has a disgusting attitude.
You're absolutely right. There is a wide range of skills and experience offshore, just the same as the UK. You get good and bad in both countries. However aside from the culture differences already mentioned there are two significant issues that I've seen repeatedly.
1) Due to the massive expansion of the IT industry in India, many people who simply aren't interested in technology are attracted to the jobs. This does happen in the UK of course. But I feel that this happens a lot more offshore. It's a well paid job which pulls in many people who have no interest in it. I can tell quite quickly who will be a great offshore worker because they usually show an actual interest in the work and technology in general. Those people can be fantastic.
2) In the UK if someone suggested taking a business critical system such as airlines or banking and gave it to a team of people just of of uni to support then we'd rightly get laughed at for risking such systems with inexperienced people. But we do seem quite happy to hand responsibility to the cheapest offshore provide we can find. Naturally to get the business that provider will give a cheap quote. The only way they can achieve a cheap price is to use cheap people, even by offshore standards. So they employ a lot of inexperienced people while management in this country can wipe their hands of any responsibility. I've seen several offshore tenders and they usually go to the cheapest one, not the company that can best demonstrate a high quality workforce.
So it's not the country itself that results in poor quality, but a willingness in this country to hand over critical systems to the cheapest person available.
