Ads crave a night on the tiles; vintage chicken, avocado or contemporary stone effect?

[BogRollBOGOF]

We might be craving tiles, but we'll leave the woodchip and artex alone unless we're feeling very brave...

Welcome into another thread covering the whole range of life and death, novelty vegetables, DIY, any other randomness and musings about a certain pandemic.

The vaccine is here - good. It was sold as the answer to all our prayers; perhaps at a time the government thought and possibly hoped it might never exist.

NOW WHEN ARE WE GOING TO FUCKING SEE THE BACK OF THESE FUCKING RESTRICTIONS????????????????????? All they keep telling us is that nothing will change for a while yet. Why are we still bowing subserviently to a clueless tinpot dictator? Why are we still paying his wages? Why are we not rioting???? Why are we remaining so docile and compliant, while Uncle Boris brings our lives crashing down around us??? Why are MPs still being paid the same, having forced many of their constituents to take a 20% pay cut, or snatched away their wages completely????????

Face nappies mandatory for a long while yet. Sigh. What is the bloody point of the vaccine if none of this is about to change???????? Why is it still fucking Groundhog Day, with the constant threat of more lockdown, more isolation, more bloody muzzles, more widespread financial ruin, more smug politicians gleefully telling us to be good little boys and girls, for a cause about which they have fiddled the figures, and deceived and gaslighted the public in every way they can?

Saint fucking Boris and his merry men need to start fucking talking about ending all this, to the public, not just in secret meetings (which they're probably not having anyway), instead of just fobbing us off with the usual "oh, maybe in three months' time we'll hand you a biscuit to keep you quiet", telling us when they're going to restore our lives to their rightful state, instead of keeping us in this constant limbo with no fucking hope. And they need to grovel profusely for the mass unemployment, decimation of business, horrendous treatment of young people, and suicides which THEY have caused. The virus didn't cause them, the dictators did.

I'm angry tonight.

I've got one eye more short-sighted than the other and I'm finding it very useful to shut my dominant "better" eye so that masky people are blurry and the obscured expressions bother me less.
I just want to do daft normal stuff like walking a few hundred metres to school and stand on the playground in a normal way and make normal face contact again.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/09/author-who-suffered-miscarriage-alone-demands-end-of-nhs-covid-partner-ban-caroline-criado-perez

@NannyGythaOgg I remember a friend of mine who was a midwife (she's retired now) telling me that a lot of doctors she knew were very arrogant and they kind of had to be in order to deal with the level of responsibility that they had but it still shocked me! I had always been a bit blind to it as I am not in medicine and nor are any of my family.

Actually, I did have a proper conversation on the playground today. One of the mums CBAed with wearing her mask. Petty victories

New year might make people more rebellious and twitchy. Christmas is a distraction. Temporary light. Many getting chance to see family again. Come January there is a lot of dark winter left with little imminent hope, relief or distraction. New year... old baggage...

wanderings because it’s given them the opportunity for social control. I don’t deny the existence of the virus. But these measures are not about infection control.

I was as angry as you are. I think I said upthread, I’m having to reframe my entire existence just to live. And my future. It’s beyond awful. I don’t think I’ll actually get over it IYSWIM.

a neighbour from another country told me “it will take time to adjust to really fearing the government”. But I don’t think he realises how I feel about fellow humans now.

Meanwhile, we have a poster who wants to go into tier 3 so she can avoid her family for longer. She doesn’t mention them being awful or anything.

Re masks

I had to have my boiler repaired- yay for hot water - and I told the chap to remove his mask if he wished. He was very grateful. But he told me an awful story - he was on a long job installing a new boiler, someone offered him a tea, then complained to his company afterwards that he’d removed his mask, saying he should have drunk it straight down.

What an awful person.

[quote smallandimperfectlyformed]@NannyGythaOgg I remember a friend of mine who was a midwife (she's retired now) telling me that a lot of doctors she knew were very arrogant and they kind of had to be in order to deal with the level of responsibility that they had but it still shocked me! I had always been a bit blind to it as I am not in medicine and nor are any of my family.[/quote]
@smallandimperfectlyformed

I don't believe they 'had' to be arrogant like that. If they 'had' to be, then they would all 'have' to be - and they certainly weren't. There were and are many great doctors who aren't the slightest bit arrogant, (to be fair, some of the arrogant ones weren't bad doctors - just pig ignorant people).

The arrogant ones, I believe, would be arrogant whatever work they did. The current situation has corroborated their belief that they are super human.

It was a doctor during my training that said 'The difference between God and some doctors, is that God knows he is not a doctor'.

Has anyone ever watched Call the Midwife? There's an episode where Jenny and Patsy are working at the London under this dick of a surgeon who is driving half of the staff under him away from nursing. And another, later on, where Jenny Agutter gets a dressing down from a Cockney lady around her age, who tells her that she has no idea what life is like for a middle aged woman in the East End because everyone treats her like God because she is a midwife and a nun. So she goes out in mufti and realises that suddenly, she too is invisible. It's actually quite moving!

Ive seen more and more people who work in healthcare/NHS. who comment on social media telling the general public what they should and shouldnt be doing. And im including the Corona board in this.

I live in social housing and ive seen it happen in this sector too.
Maybe its because in both cases its perceived to be free so you should be grateful.

Ive noticed the attitudes in both cases are very very similar.

@MercyBooth

Ive seen more and more people who work in healthcare/NHS. who comment on social media telling the general public what they should and shouldnt be doing. And im including the Corona board in this.

I live in social housing and ive seen it happen in this sector too.
Maybe its because in both cases its perceived to be free so you should be grateful.

Ive noticed the attitudes in both cases are very very similar.

Not meaning to be cynical... but do you think all the HCPs and teachers or the Corona board really are HCPs and teachers?

No i think some are part of a very emotionally abusive guilt tripping campaign to try and guilt people into not visiting family at Christmas.

What happened with Eid was disgusting but at least they didnt get four weeks of guilt tripping and emotional blackmail beforehand.

But when you bring up holidays abroad...........radio silence

NO DISRESPECT to anyone here who has one booked. No one on here is being hypocritical

Its the do as i say not as i do trope that gets my back up.

I think there is going to be a huge backlash when this is all over.

Jourdain. Just seen the "look on the bright side comment" The worlds gone mad.

Just wanted to say.............there are people on this thread who work in the health/ wellbeing field who i know have been struggling. And i have a lot of respect for you and what you do. There are some fab people who work in these fields
Im sending a couple of treats in a jiffy bag to a friend who works as a cleaner in the NHS, We dont normally do Christmas presents, they are more of a thank you for what shes been doing and to let her know its appreciated and they are being posted as i cant go round to see her. A duo set of hand creams, an Aero chocolate orange bar and a Garnier Moisture Bomb face mask.

Havent physically seen her for ages.

I hope some aren’t teachers, I never realised my children were so hated.
And to Jourdain11

The comments from teachers don't surprise me, I know a few who colleagues who hate children but what they say in normal times is controlled by policy. You can't call children half the things I was called as a child. Most staff are lovely but I do wonder how many have been swayed by the loudest voices in the staff room. Or how many hate their jobs because of the hours and the stress and the constantly changing pointless demands (pink, purple and green pen anyone?) so pretend the reason they don't want to go in is covid. I imagine it would be similar in nursing.

I think restrictions will end quicker than we expect though once the winter is over but I agree with PP a few pages back who said the government don't want to put a date on it yet incase their own cockups (or brexit) delay it. More for their own image reasons than for our safety of course.

@Jourdain11, no I don't think they all are. Or I think some are all "I work in the NHS" but are dental receptionists or something. Nothing against dental receptionists but...

I always think an interesting look into this comes from 3 of my friends. One is a nurse. She doesn't work on or near a covid ward and not seen a single covid patient. She is on Facebook at least once a day posting as a "frontline nhs worker" how she puts herself at risk so the least we can do is behave ourselves. Loads of likes, shares and "you're so amazing" and "thanks hun, I'm just doing my job".

Friend 2. Pharmacist, run off her feet and not had a day off since February as no one can see a gp they are all going to Pharmacist. In contact with ill, contagious people, no idea if they have covid, has seen two of her regular customers have died due to lack of care from GP (undiagnosed conditions). She just gets on with it.

Friend 3. Manager of a care home. Worked like an absolute beast throughout to keep covid out of her home, has broken her heart at the deterioration of some of her family (she calls them her family) while having to manage upset relatives too. Not a peep from her either.

And those of us that work with vulnerable children and young people may as well be invisible. Not that I'm arsed, I and most of my colleagues do what we do because we want to make a difference. But just making the point that "vulnerable" only matters if its vulnerable to covid.

This deification of nhs workers is odd tbh.

There is a twitter thread upthread that @MercyBooth linked to. The comments are interesting, but one of them I loved. It was a video called something like "covid and the sanctimonious nurse. I thought it was hilarious.

The thing is.... all jobs have a wide variety of people working within them. Even if you narrow it down to my field, even if you narrow it down to specific roles within my field, the breadth of difference between colleagues in terms of attitude, ability, personality, knowledge etc is massive. There are twats in every area, HCPs are no exception.
It's why I can't stand the "my friend is a nurse and she told me...." we spend our days debating with each other and eye rolling at colleagues we know, your job role does not necessarily make you an expert in every area of health and social care provision.

I'm glad my friend in the NHS (senior strategic backroom role) was right when she said back in September that she was planning the logistics for administering a vaccine by Christmas. She's too busy to post self-agrandising crap on SM as most genuinely busy people are.

As someone who works for the NHS, I don't know if my job is busier because I only started mid pandemic. I think I've probably had more staffing issues than I probably would've had pre pandemic. However for the average outpatient med sec, things have been quiet because they've only very recently started doing clinics again. Inpatients has remained the same (always full).

I don't feel like I need a clap or owt. I mean I'm rushed off my arse but that's just the job isn't it? I've been rushed off my arse in previous jobs which weren't NHS.

There are definitely people working harder, without a shadow of a doubt, but there will be a lot of people who aren't, for whom things are exactly the same or easier.

We are getting busier in terms of crisis team work, more referrals, but the wards are always and have always been full, we don't ever have a spare bed without someone lined up for it unfortunately.

@wanderings everything you just said! With knobs on! We need to keep angry!

@LivinLaVidaLoki good post

@wanderings well said. I’m angry now. Scotland is even worse as regards control and now Queen Nic is saying not to book summer holidays out of Scotland next year.

It’s now becoming clear that control is a big part of this and I have had enough.

@wanderings, @LivinLaVidaLoki, well said, both of you.

I was thinking about why there wasn't more protesting and I realised that, in many ways, there is. It's just quiet disobedience. People quietly having tea together, telling people they don't need to mask up in their house as upthread, walking together, and very few people are masking at school pickup and drop off as the pavement is not school property.

The problem is the protests need to be louder and properly covered by the media but they won't be.

@wanderings yes, well said.
Well, I have just had a lovely few days staying with a friend in Cornwall. Neither of us give a shit if it's against the stupid rules. Much wine was drunk, and many shops were raided for Christmas presents. I shall be visiting again soon.
Meanwhile, the hymns my fil chose for his funeral can only be played on CD as singing is verboten. Notwithstanding it is occurring in a very large church and there will be about 10 people there, so we could all stand at least 50 feet apart.