To expect people ill with Covid stay home?

Yes it’s clear you have ‘no idea’. Lucky you, eh?

Of course I care, that’s the whole point. I care about those whose plans I don’t want to ruin and I care about those who (or are looking after those who) are vulnerable. And I care to the extent that I wouldn’t sacrifice their lives for the sake of £75.

To illustrate the point, I wouldn’t go to work for a day for £1m if it meant a stranger would lose their life. That’s why I’m amazed that you’re suggesting you would go to work for £75 if it’d cost someone their life. The actual monetary value is irrelevant on the basis there’s no value can be put on life. That's the point.

You however have, remarkably, repeatedly stated that your £75 is more important than another individuals life, seemingly purely because they have the misfortune of being “ strangers”.

Being able to WFH (note: I can’t always and have to travel a lot) has got nothing to do with it. I held the same views prior to it being more common to WFH (and in fact, also during a period when I worked away from home Monday to Friday each week!). So stop making excuses for your poor selfish attitude

@ExpectMore You've clearly never struggled financially. Do you have a rich husband? 😀
Can't see you going into work wearing thermal leggings and a pair of thick trousers whilst losing a baby because you don't want to alarm people but need to pay the rent.

Plenty pay SSP rather than full pay?

But its not £75 for someone's life is it? Im sure if someone was asked would you shoot this person for £75 theyd say no!
Its the tiny chance of someone's life (and lets be honest you'd have to be around someone vulnerable, pass it on to hem and then teyd have to get ill and die - so a whole chain of events!!) Versus guaranteed loss of £75 which might mean rent arrears. And it wouldn't be 1 day would it? If youre trying to avoid spread specifically it would probably be 4 or 5 days, so more like £300.
And before you come at me I ALWAYS wfh if im ill. Because I CAN

There are vaccines for both flu and COVID

If you are medically vulnerable you get them on the NHS

If you don’t reach the NHS criteria you can book in for private jabs.

Don’t people just take responsibility for their own health?

We are booked in for nearly £400 of private Covid jabs (getting teens done they love a vaccine) because it’s worth not risking getting Covid complications and it might protect our oldies, even though they also get jobs but you never know.

Yes it’s a chunk of money but we all know the NHS can’t give everyone everything they want so we budget a bit more for some medical additions

I’m getting jabbed today. Sadly no vaccine can cover every possible variant of these conditions so vaccines only go so far. We have a collective responsibility for our society members but sadly we’re not in a society where people look after each other in the way we should

That is awful and you shouldn’t have to put yourself through that. Employers give time off for sickness and miscarriages so you should make use of it. It’s part of the wider benefits package after all. They couldn’t and wouldn’t sack anyone for taking time off in such situations. It might also be worth considering a different employer as you seem to have serious mistrust issues with your current one.

@ExpectMore I'm self-employed; I don't have an employer.

Of course I have. I grew up in poverty and clawed my way out of it through hard work. You seem to assume the only way is to leech from rely on someone else. Explains a lot.

@ExpectMore Yes I rely on someone else so much I go into work whilst miscarrying.
So you are wealthy. You don't pay rent. Of course not. You have zero idea.

I’m sorry that you suffered a miscarriage @FunPartyIdeas , and especially that you had to work through it- that’s awful.

So this situation is of your own making then. Assuming you need to provision for £300 stock leave pretty annum, that’s a little more than £1.50 on your daily rate. Surely you can change your whole circumstance by adding £1.50 to a daily rate….? If not, you’d be better off being employed as pretty pointless being self employed with such little control of your own circumstances.

edited to add: Paying rent is a much cushier situation than paying a mortgage in many respects. It’s an all in rate with zero additional unexpected expenses, if you miss a rent payment, it’s months before you lose the roof over your head unlike if you miss a mortgage payment you can be evicted in no time. And landlords aren’t creaming a healthy profit off the top. For circumstances out side of my control, if ended up being an accidental landlord of a property I have to let out as I can’t sell (but needed to move, so had to rent somewhere else). Last year the let apartment cost me £4k more than it generated. You’ve no idea.

Regarding SSP, yes there are no waiting days now so it's a day one entitlement if you are eligible.

SSP is £123.25 per week. It doesn't go up/down depending on the amount of days you work as it's a flat weekly rate not a daily rate.

Work 5 days per week = 24.65 per day
Work 4 days per week = 30.81 per day
Work 3 days per week = 41.08 per week

So on and so forth.

If someone is on minimum wage and works 40 hrs per week, their weekly working wage is around £508 per week so that's a massive difference in pay.

I’ve paid rent. I’ve lived in poverty. I wouldn’t currently consider myself wealthy (thanks to having to contribute so many taxes to pay for those that won’t depend on themselves, but that’s a different discussion).

Financial circumstance shouldn’t change principals. That’s the whole point of principals.

@ExpectMore Can't stop to argue - have arrived at work.
Enjoy your day ar work too? 😀

About the £75/day I referenced earlier….

Not working today or for the next 6 weeks - took some parental leave to enjoy it with my kids as they’re only young once.

But enjoy your day at work 🙃

What a luxury to be able to take 6 weeks off work! How privileged you are.

YANBU.

The real issue stems around shit employers, how much time you can have off and sick pay or lack of.

Large companies often offer sick pay but have limited incidents of sick leave. 1 day equals 1 incident, yet one 1 week could still count as 1 incident if it is the same bout of illness.

I was sick on a Monday and called in, 1 strike, I dragged myself to work on Tuesday like a martyr (shouldn’t have), I felt so ill I called in sick on the Wednesday and that was another strike. It tipped me over my limit of 5 incidents for the year, effectively I got penalised for trying to go to work. Had I taken the full week it would have counted as 1 incident not 2! Make that make sense.

My husband runs business and he tells his employees to stay home when they are unwell so they don’t make everyone else in the office unwell too. They still get paid and come back when they are better. I think employees should apply common sense and decency, but so few seldom do.

I will now take maximum time off if I’m ill as I’m incentivised to do so, I do think it’s selfish to knowingly put others at risk of infection too. One of my colleagues is a clatty cow and she’s forever coming in coughing and sneezing, she makes everyone in a 10 yard vicinity ill on the regular. I can’t stand it! Why should I be forced to sit next to that?

I appreciate being self employed equals no work, no money so the above doesn’t apply. Fortunately, most self employed people I know work in solitary conditions or outdoors so the chance of spreading infection to others is slim.

Looked at as a whole for the week, it's just over 75% less than the weekly working wage someone on minimum wage working 40hrs per week would get. So a massive difference.

If someone had a week off and got SSP and then returned to work as normal it would be an overall reduction of about 19% of their whole monthly wage.

I agree with this. Someone I know in her fifties caught Covid and has been left with long Covid, she was self employed (a physiotherapist) and has had to close her clinic and stop work entirely. She hasn’t been able to work since, and is still struggling, with an huge impact on her financially and emotionally from no longer having her career.
She was slim, fit, very active and healthy etc beforehand. It’s terrible.
It took me six months to properly recover from Covid, and nobody yet knows the long term impact of it on our health including our brain health. It is not “just a cold”.
I always test if I get symptoms, and I would isolate if sick. I realise some people are forced to go into work, but in any other situation I think it’s totally wrong to mix with other people.
I avoid other people as much as possible when I have a cold, I’m certainly not going to spread Covid around and risk killing someone.

Privilege implies unearned advantage. It’s certainly not that.

I have worked hard to get to this point in my life and worked hard this year already to pay for it.

My children have been and will be in childcare 5 days a week due to my work (and having no nearby family support) so it’s my way of creating a way to spend quality time with them.

That’s an earned set of circumstances. Not a privilege granted through some divine intervention.

But it’s a known circumstance that should be accounted for? Never mind a lot less than the 40%+ higher rate tax payers pay to provision a safety net for people to take time off.