Boris briefing at 11am today

[Scottishgirl85]

More easing? Please 3 households indoor at a time so our holiday can go ahead!

Any responsible / sane business will do what works for their own business and their employees,
not the profits of commercial landlords and coffee shops,
or the general economy

Many firms have potential for considerable savings on rents, utilities, insurance - if WFH works for them
And yes, employees will have to accept WFH or on site, whatever management decides

My old employer still has all the tech centre WFH atm (I retired in Feb)
This reportedly works well, as we often worked with sites in other countries
They just plan the occasional office day, maybe a couple of times a month, for brainstorming etc

I would have loved WFH during my career, regardless of COVID, to save commuting time & money

COVID has massively accelerated some social / economic changes that were going to happen anyway, over the next 10+ years
but now people have experienced these changes, some of them will stay:
e.g.
much more WFH
much more online shopping

And yes, employees will have to accept WFH or on site, whatever management decides

Don't employment contracts have your work location in them?

If a company decides to go fully remote then that would be a change of the terms & conditions. I took the redundancy option a few years back when the company I worked for moved out of London. If the company I work for now decides to go fully remote then surely they will have to offer me some form of settlement.

Boris seems to think there is an army of grandparents waiting to do childcare. But won't a lot of them be returning to work themselves?

He seems clueless about bubbles, and oblivious to the fact that there may be two sets of grandparents (or more, with blended families). Or that a household may have already bubbled with a vulnerable grandparent and so can't bubble with another lot.

You woukd think they might sit down and think things through a bit before coming out with this stuff.

@GetOffYourHighHorse

'And given what we are learning about the disease mechanism of Covid and the damage it can cause to the cardio vascular system even in milder cases, there’s a very good reason why someone who had a heart attack several months after a covid test might have covid as an underlying cause on the death certificate.'

That sounds pretty much what the director of PHE said too. Doesn't sound convincing tbh. I would suggest that when we are told someone has died of covid we expect it to be those that have died of it as a direct cause not something they had recovered from a while ago and then gone on to die of terminal cancer.

I think the government are pretty keen we don't start thinking about or discussing the organ and brain impacts on younger people who have only 'mild' covid.

There is a benefit in policy terms of covid being die or recover, but it isn't true and it is a worrying risk to people of working age.

@TheSparklyPussycat

Boris seems to think there is an army of grandparents waiting to do childcare. But won't a lot of them be returning to work themselves?

He seems clueless about bubbles, and oblivious to the fact that there may be two sets of grandparents (or more, with blended families). Or that a household may have already bubbled with a vulnerable grandparent and so can't bubble with another lot.

You woukd think they might sit down and think things through a bit before coming out with this stuff.

This...

Most of us don't have access to drop of the hat childcare. It's the lack of thought, how can you give a date of 1 August when you KNOW there's no childcare in place for the vast majority.

They aren't in touch with reality, all these Tory boys have a little wife at home to deal with "stuff", they are taking us women back years

@user1573957284738

But you presumably knew when you chose to accept the job(s) that you would have to "deal with an open plan offices for years and years". Most people who are now working from home didn't sign up for it. Some may love it, some may hate it, but it's not what most people anticipated when they accepted a job offer.

Chose? From the wide array of employers pre-pandemic who were insistent WFH was impossible? We never had the choice you're pretending; for most people it was a choice between paying the bills and working in a damaging and inappropriate environment.

I actually felt compassion originally for the people struggling to WFH because it's not the right environment for them, because I know how awful that is and how much it can mess your life up. Except then I observed that the vast majority of you still have no insight or compassion for the damage your preferences have caused other people or what we've been going through all this time so you could have things in your ideal way. My patience is wearing thin now.

You've only had to do this a few months; we've had to endure it and its harmful effects for years and now we finally get a chance at a healthy work environment it's taken away for the benefit of people like you still who have no empathy or consideration for us.

Spot on. You'd think the last few months would give them some empathy towards introverts struggles in having to adapt to an extrovert world and workplace.

Hopefully the good that will come from this will be much increased choices around where we work and flexibility inbuilt into contracts. I bet given the choice most people would opt for a blend of both. It would also massively help companies meet inevitable climate change targets.

They are forcing the 2nd wave and don't want to miss out on the revenue from Christmas shopping so want everything to open and fast. They don't care about health.

As for the rules - they pick them out of a hat moments before hr makes the news.

bemused exactly.
Full schools pretty much 0 changes. Wanting people back in the office. And yet we can spread it in shops. Sounds a lot like 'masks dont work' except they needed them for protecting the nhs. And yet countries that used them did better.
Maybe planning early peak so bj can have a nice xmas

@Meruem, it was all about money in Mid May when Boris decided that 4 & 5 yr olds should go back to school first on June 1st ! Certainly did not consider the health of the teachers.
@CantSayJack, yep exactly. Not allowed to wear masks in school with 30 children but compulsary to wear them in shops !!

@crosseyedMary

The man's a fool I can't take him seriously he's like Ken Dodd with a posh voice (appreciate that Ken Dodd would score higher on integrity)

but Ken Dodd was a genius and an entertainer. that johnson is over privileged and pointless. The sooner we get rid of the public school system foisting upper class twits onto us for the ruling of the country, the better.

@itsthefinalcountdown re your sibling in residential care... my DS is too. We have managed to negotiate visits by getting a Covid test every couple of weeks and visiting within 48 hours of a negative result. Speak to the manager.. emphasise how positive effect of a visit in sibling outweighs any negligible risk if visiting after a test. Worth a go

*on sibling

[quote StatisticalSense]@cosycatsocks
Gyms reopen on the 25th but the guidelines on working from home don't change until the 25th. It is also true that getting people into the office will for many boost the level of exercise that they are doing. The government are also happy for you to buy a salad and fruit smoothie from the cafe if you really wanted rather than anything unhealthy. The truth is the economy is what funds the NHS which means protecting the NHS requires protecting the economy as much as physically possible, which simply cannot be said about hugs.[/quote]
This is very true but we don’t get this level of transparency from them. And we don’t know what’s true, what’s spin and what’s being hushed up. I don’t know how they can win the trust back, they’ve gone too far down the line. Although they don’t seem interesting in reflecting / changing track / evaluating their approach until it’s all over anyway.

Surely they can’t stop siblings meeting - I’ve known other siblings to meet who are in residential care, under 12 obviously ok without distancing but over you would have to, where is this child’s rights? Xx

@sandra79

Surely they can’t stop siblings meeting - I’ve known other siblings to meet who are in residential care, under 12 obviously ok without distancing but over you would have to, where is this child’s rights? Xx

They can. As the restrictions get looser in the community, the risk in residential environments (care homes) becomes higher. At least temporarily. I work in one. It’s even more of a juggling act then we have to try and manage in the outside world. To get it wrong means the virus ripping through a place and possibly having catastrophic effect on already very vulnerable people.

So while I’ve missed DS (age 20) terribly, I alto fully understand the restrictions that have had to remain in place where he lives. Us having regular Covid tests has created a way of making a compromise with the home and DP and I being able to see him (in the garden, wearing full PPE). Last week we took a McDonald’s and had a lovely time. It means the world to see him.