Coronavirus

[bishbosh]

On ‎5‎/‎1‎/‎2020 at 11:26 AM, Nonimouse said:

I'm busier than usual - mainly because it's so easy to work longer hours. I'm still doing the occasional site visit, which is nice. I enjoy not being in the office as I have nothing in common with most of my colleagues. Most of them are engineers, so have problems with normal speech - anything more than one syllable, personal hygiene and eating crayons. They don't understand my work and so, like fire, it is best avoided. Added to which, my work destroys their work, so I'm top trump - this confuses them. My work also confuses the 'bean counters', a sub race of civil servants that has split off from homo sapiens, to form what is known as Homo quantitysurveyorensis - one of those dead end splits of the genetic line.  Like Smaug, they like to sleep on piles of money, dreaming of yet more forms to delay, or if possible negate any expenditure...

Ahem!

[Arjan]

FWIIW...

We're here in France way further in Lockdown than you guys but for us here it is basically "business as usual" - we have offices at home, plenty of space,  Land Rovers  around and horses with plenty of space for them to play.

Very busy, a lot of new work and some challenging comms issues, but other than that we're very busy.

Class room courses, obviously, have come to a halt but we 're tele teaching and simply rescheduling a lot.

[Nonimouse]

17 hours ago, bishbosh said:

Ahem!

Ok Charles, there are one or two engineers who have adopted a more civilised style - and you are one of the better ones. I've not seen you eat crayons for years

[bishbosh]

On ‎5‎/‎5‎/‎2020 at 9:17 AM, Nonimouse said:

Ok Charles, there are one or two engineers who have adopted a more civilised style - and you are one of the better ones. I've not seen you eat crayons for years

You keep them all for yourself! Something about wanting to poop rainbows IIRC? 😛 

[geoffbeaumont]

48 minutes ago, bishbosh said:

You keep them all for yourself! Something about wanting to poop rainbows IIRC? 😛 

My old dog used to do that. Quite alarming when you spot bright red dog carp on the lawn. Moves on to amusing when you realise there's also blue and purple...

[Happyoldgit]

Thoughts on BJ's announcement this evening?

[western]

For me not much change,

I still can't travel freely to see any friends or the rest of my family as they are 240 miles away, My Mum is in 12 week lock down as she is in that age range, so couldn't stay with anyone if I was able to go up country, 

I am working but our 2 shift system has been adjusted to a 3 shift, so manpower is reduced to the minimum that we can work with safely, with live operating aircraft,

so that means a 5 day week of 12 hour shifts, weekend/bank holiday working if required, then 2 weeks off, as both the other shifts will be covering the 2 week period, but we can be called in for training or to cover for illness on one of the other shifts. 

All Motorsport is totally locked down so no rallies or training days for the forseeable future or until this situation is well under control, but I'm coping OK at home when not at work, catching up with jobs on110 & other house/garden work.

[landroversforever]

[Bowie69]

41 minutes ago, landroversforever said:

This sort of thing on Facebook and Twitter is hardly helpful to be honest.sorry Ross, I'm not picking on you

It's a delicate situation that has to be managed along a proposed timeline, which he has done... Personally I think they've done quite well with this, though I suspect they will need to start being firmer with the get back to work message for people to take much notice, or nothing will happen until the furlough scheme is wound up in July.

Again, he's relying on people's common sense and ingenuity to work out how they do somethi g, hopefully it will work out better than when he tried it before -the lockdown 'light'  the weekend before proper lockdown.

 

[Anderzander]

Is furlough being wound up in July official ?

[landroversforever]

26 minutes ago, Bowie69 said:

Again, he's relying on people's common sense and ingenuity to work out how they do somethi g, hopefully it will work out better than when he tried it before -the lockdown 'light'  the weekend before proper lockdown.

 

That’s the trouble though, plenty of people didn’t have the common sense then and they still haven’t during lockdown. So many have not managed to follow the rules when it was tighter so relaxing anything is just opening the floodgates IMO. 

[Bowie69]

That's my understanding....a gradual winding down towards that:

Quote

But it is believed Mr Sunak will start to phase out the scheme from as early as next week - and that some of the 6.3 million workers furloughed could return to work on a part-time basis.

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/11541429/when-furlough-scheme-end-uk/

 

[Bowie69]

1 minute ago, landroversforever said:

That’s the trouble though, plenty of people didn’t have the common sense then and they still haven’t during lockdown. So many have not managed to follow the rules when it was tighter so relaxing anything is just opening the floodgates IMO. 

I don't agree that people haven't followed advice during lockdown, just look at the figures for transport use. People in parks are very much the minority, and of course pounced on by the media.

In fact, there are many rumblings about how they hadn't expected such compliance and that the financial hit is going to be much harder than they anticipated.

Remember, without an economy, we don't get taxes for healthcare, people starve from unemployment, gambling and alcohol addictions increase, suicides increase.... Deaths from covid is one thing, how are they going to measure the other deaths from the financial and mental health fall out?

 

[Anderzander]

I saw that in a few places - just not anything from him or HMT that confirmed it?

I do think it was a confused message tonight - He says: “So, work from home if you can, but you should go to work if you can’t work from home.” But how many people have jobs where they can maintain 2m from everyone ?

I think people will take this to mean head on out - and just like where we had social distancing before the lock down, I would expect it to not work. How do you maintain distance when there are too many people there?

[Bowie69]

They've been sending out masses of guidance for 7 different work scenarios with suggestions on how it can be made to work in different industries.

If some people can work from home, that means some can go into the office, or work shifts, or 3 days a week, or open up the board room as an office, move a machine.... These are all doable things, with a bit of thought.

And of course supply PPE where appropriate..

Agree nothing concrete, but furlough has already been extended a month, and can't continue due to the numbers of people on it.

I think it was the wages of 80% of the country are being paid by the government at the moment?

[Anderzander]

I hadn’t seen the guidance - thanks. Any pointers to where I can find it please?

I read somewhere that the furlough spend was £8bn - I’m not sure if that’s in total ?

To give some context: 

There are already a fair number of people who have become unemployed, though compared to the total spend across state pensions, health related benefits, and working age benefits this only represents about a 1% swing.
 

The total cost of all of those is in the public domain and is about £160bn - with the majority of that being state pension. 

[Happyoldgit]

And what if the gradual increase in individual movements and contact results in a second wave, what then? The virus has not gone away and we could find ourselves back to where we were, or worse could we not?

 

[Anderzander]

That’s what has started to happen in Germany - infection rates rising again in line with the restrictions being relaxed.

[Snagger]

It’s a difficult call, in fairness, and the existing restrictions have at best only slightly “flattened the curve”, so continuing with this level of economic damage while not having a strong effect on the contagion is probably imprudent.

There is a choice of freeing things up and letting businesses start to recover, or really tightening up and having much harder quarantine to stop the spread but with an economic cost.  Given that so many wouldn’t even comply with the lax restrictions and behaved so anti socially, what chance of compliance with harsh restrictions?  I think Boris has been forced into a gradual surrender by a selfish, ignorant but loud minority who only care about their instant self gratification.

[mad_pete]

6 hours ago, Happyoldgit said:

And what if the gradual increase in individual movements and contact results in a second wave, what then? The virus has not gone away and we could find ourselves back to where we were, or worse could we not?

 

We could, it will be closely monitored. I think lockdown has taken an amount out and R0 is running below 1 at the moment. The lowest risk items can start back up. If it comes to it the Government can provide increased motivations for people to follow the rules and if it looks second wave it’s back to less contact.

[Mo Murphy]

Being out and about on my working days I can say that the vast majority of people are abiding by the lock down restrictions, though as time passes and lock down prevents infection some are becoming over confident and are out unnecessarily.

By example I'll highlight Ross @landroversforever, going to his workshop, probably a quite harmless but unnecessary journey and not following the spirit of lock down.

The national media would have you think that the nation is in near revolt over lock down !

The Media tends dramatise, sensationalise and exaggerate the stories it's reporting because that sells advertising space and that rather colours our general view of what's going on outside, particularly if you are staying home and it's your principal source of information. I honestly believe that there is a case, in times of national crisis, for there to be more control of the national media so that it can provide a more supportive role to the nations efforts to resolve the crisis rather than attempting to cut the legs from under it. To me they seem to be attempting to profit from the crisis rather than being part of the solution.

Who knows where the meme that Ross posted up came from originally, Moscow ? Tehran ? or Beijing ? created perhaps with the sole purpose of gently creating discord in our nation.

I'm not going to bang a gong for Boris but for the government who are trying to steer the nation through this pandemic, however ineptly. They have made mistakes, for example with the lack of provision and poor quality of PPE (and I as well as many others have been at the sharp end of that one) but don't think it would have been any different with a Labour or Lib Dem government, the roots of that particular problem go back 20 years.

Hindsight is a most wonderful tool !

They are trying to juggle the medical needs of the nation with the economic needs, vociferous critics and a population growing weary of lock down.

We have to pull through it as a nation not as a bunch of armchair critics, sowing dissent and looking out only for ourselves. That goes for the very brightest brains out there as well as the not quite so bright.

Of course, there is a place for discussion and review but it needs to be objective and present solutions rather than to score political points or provide increased income

If we don't work together as a nation then the price will be paid not by you but by your parents, your grandparents and those trying to protect them.

Is that a price worth paying ?

Mo

(Who's now off out now to do his bit for the covid infected, under resourced with flimsy PPE and being paid a pittance 😉)

 

Ps Ross, I haven't singled you out, you just happened to own 2 forum examples I could use.

[Ed Poore]

10 hours ago, Happyoldgit said:

Thoughts on BJ's announcement this evening?

Dare I say doesn't apply to me? 

No genuinely, Wales has its own set of guidelines. 

[ballcock]

Just now, Ed Poore said:

Dare I say doesn't apply to me? 

No genuinely, Wales has its own set of guidelines. 

Same as myself although  as a UK citizen I thought I was governed by the UK parliament not the pratts in Cardiff.

[Ed Poore]

Just now, ballcock said:

Same as myself although  as a UK citizen I thought I was governed by the UK parliament not the pratts in Cardiff.

I've not really been paying much attention to anything as I've got plenty of work and projects around the place to keep me entertained for a lifetime. Most of what I hear comes filtered by my parents or sister in London. One thing that does make some sense is having our own set of rules if we are behind England in the curve. But where do you stop?

[Snagger]

Mo, I agree with you.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and the media love to prop tray a nation in collapse.  Governments like the Russians, Chinese, India, a lot of the EU and many more will be doing their utmost to paint this picture and cause us more trouble.  The irresponsible part of society is a minority, and probably a good deal smaller than being portrayed, but they should have been dealt with harshly.  I think the majority have been sensible and would not have disagreed with a sharper approach that would have reaped stronger benefits and possibly allowed a return to normal faster.  But key to that would have been closing ports and airports.  I’m astonished how little was done with those.