Don't tier the pants out of it.

[Cismyfatarse]

Thread level 47.

@WouldBeGood I wasn’t judging the people at all it was 7 am clearly they are all going to work. It was more judging the government and their new legislation about must work from home etc. That came into force on Saturday it’s exactly the same out there at rush hour . I was genuinely expected the roads to be quiet .

Thanks wouldbegood I warned them after I read about what happened to your DF - outrageous.

The issue is Scotland took their eye off the ball. Why when they knew that the vaccine was coming had they not done a recruitment process. Even got the applications in, reviewed, interviewed, background checks done, ready to issue start dates?
Instead they seem to have waited until they had the vaccine in a fridge before starting the process. - duh!

The footering with lockdown wouldn't do anything to reduce Monday traffic, you can only click and collect at the door, rather than the counter inside.
Not many people are out clicking and collecting at 8am.

Remember in March lots of business was closed because they didn't have hand sanitizer, masks, screens or soap.
Businesses are open because we need to keep the country going.
Construction is open it was closed in March. Outpatients are happening because they can't delay any longer. Teachers were at home this time they are in school. People were scared to order unnecessary stuff because it put the delivery guys at risk. People now see it as they are covid secure.
Necessary support bubbles are allowed, and take away food is open even if its collect at the door. People who are out and about still need food, construction workers and truck drivers.

I'm not surprised peppa. The WFH thing has been required for a while, and it seems the vast majority of employers have been sensible. The rule was, and still is I think, that you should (and now have to) WFH unless your job can't be done from home. There probably were a few unscrupulous employers who insisted that their office based staff weren't working effectively/ to full capacity at home, so made them travel, (and they could still argue that that is allowed) but the vast majority of those kinds of jobs will still be being done from home. But there are a lot of "non essential jobs" - in government terms, albeit very very essential to the companies and the employees of course- that can't be done from home. These industries were closed in March, or so constrained by other industries having stopped or slowed down they basically stopped themselves, but now they are allowed to operate. So employees are validly allowed to travel. I really don't think many people are taking the piss on "travel for work".

SG could wfh and set a good example .

@Lockdownbear it was more the stopping on tradesmen being allowed in private dwellings for anything other than essential upkeep that I thought would have a impact on traffic not really click and collect .

Well, I'm judging one person who is travelling. DH is away into the office this morning despite being perfectly able to work from home. I think he just feels like he's been skiving as he's not been in the building for over a week. He doesn't really get the point of working from home.

@rookiemere

SG could wfh and set a good example .

Agree! That does seem like the kind of thing that normal people have been doing over Zoom since March. (Parliament is basically a large in-person meeting...) I appreciate there are issues, but it can't be rocket science to have debates and voting done electronically, with public access allowed where it would normally be allowed from the public gallery. I'm sure the smaller committees have been taking digital submissions for a while (some msp was cat- bombed in the middle of a pompous speech from home, I seem to remember). Even if some msps "phoned in" from their own holyrood offices if home broadband isn't suitable, it would save them having to gather in the chamber just to be seen to be there.

[quote Peppafrig]@Lockdownbear it was more the stopping on tradesmen being allowed in private dwellings for anything other than essential upkeep that I thought would have a impact on traffic not really click and collect .[/quote]
Do you know many people who get non-essential work done in January ?

For windows and stuff people usually try to get done before winter or wait until spring.
People often try to get kitchens/ bathrooms done before Christmas.

January is a quiet month, generally.

I got a carpet laid last week and tbh that was pretty non-essential but my toes were cold

I work from home all the time anyway so I haven't got an office to go into.

DH has been working at home since the week before schools closed, but has gone into the office today. They have set up a "management rota" to have one senior person in each day, as they've found unsurprisingly they've found it's easier to deal with issues face to face rather than over email or Zoom.

We can't just shut down all jobs for an undefined period until Nicola decrees it's "safe".

Exactly the majority of people who can work from home are still at home. Employers are thinking how much can I save in office space by not having people in full time when this is done. Hotdesking flexible working save me a few bob!

I've been working from home for 15 years, had never seen the tax break on money saving expert! It's so much better than dragging yourself into an office and you save money on snacks/lunch/commute.

I don’t think we should shut down all jobs at all. But I also don’t think it’s very sensible to have workers traveling form high prevalence areas to low prevalence areas daily. On my own site today we have 4 of us who have travelled from Glasgow to Edinburgh . 10 guys who got the train up from London . The rest are local . Then the government seem surprised the new variant got here and is spreading so fast .

Isn't this the issue in the uk and mainland Europe - no natural borders and an entrenched culture of getting in the car which makes the covid zero strategy through endless travel restrictions always porous and failure prone.

It's funny how we've tried so hard to turn the clock back on 30+ years of freedom of movement.

To be fair to the government though @Peppafrig they have done the opposite of advising people to travel up from England to Scotland. Companies must use some common sense. Do the London people have to be up here ?

@rookiemere they have to get to work and they can’t do it from home so the Scottish government would say yes. The government have said construction sites are business as usual so that’s what they are doing. If they told these workers to stay at home they would not have the workforce required to met their deadlines and would get fined . It’s not just my site workers are travelling to sites all over Scotland daily. It also works in the reverse too many Scottish workers traveling to London too then obviously come home at the weekend. They have only said you can’t come to Scotland unless it’s an essential purpose and work is included in that list .

Apparently the Army are scouting vaccination centres and will have recommendations by the end of this week. It mentions 11 centres, but our local medical practice already had news on their website about 11 vaccination centres, one of which is our community centre, on 12th January. I can't figure out what's going on any more.

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/1894264/fife-soldiers-vaccine/

www.fifetoday.co.uk/news/politics/council/fife-launches-70-centres-covid-vaccines-3093658?fbclid=IwAR0gXm3ENYE0UvYmud8jX-3gDMJ9Y6gD_r3jPlTRIf-RjLDrjTYRLX-ns-0

Apparently the Army are scouting vaccination centres and will have recommendations by the end of this week

But that's not good enough. There have been mass vaccination centres up and running in England for a fortnight.

Why are we still at the "scouting" stage?

It really isn't good enough that they are only just scouting vaccination centres.
That should have been done months ago. I actually thought taking the flu jabs away from the GPs was really a trial run for the covid vaccine.

How daft was I to credit them with joined up thinking?

It is shambolic. It's been obvious for a while that there would be a vaccine, exact timing and which company it would come from was an unknown but this should have been sorted months ago.

Agree and the disgusting thing is that they will stand up and announce the deaths and berate the general public for not doing enough.

Person I mentioned upthread who'd volunteered for vaccinations has been sent for induction. So far, three different days, three different hospitals, all of whom claimed to have no knowledge of their induction. 12 of them turned up each time, so not her mistake.

Shambolic is very accurate

I live next to the main road into Glasgow. When the schools are open lots of parents drop their DC off on the way to work and then carry on the in-town route. Now the schools are off if they have to travel for work they head straight for the motorway. Given how quiet our main road is I suspect the M8 is busier to compensate. Had QEUH staff complaining on my FB last week about how busy the M8 was compared to last lockdown. Given more general patient access, use of the Louisa Jordan both for treatment and vaccination and a test centre at the Riverside Museum it is no surprise.

Re construction. I have friends who travelled in and out of Scotland throughout the first lockdown when construction was closed here but not elsewhere. All the supermarket lorries will be the same. I also wonder if the petrol price being lower and rail and air transport capacity being cut will have changed logistic decisions on when to use roads.

@RaspberryCoulis

Apparently the Army are scouting vaccination centres and will have recommendations by the end of this week

But that's not good enough. There have been mass vaccination centres up and running in England for a fortnight.

Why are we still at the "scouting" stage?

Exactly! I mean, I'm happy that they've done the amount they have, but it's nowhere near the target they set for themselves is it?