Here come those tiers again.

[Cismyfatarse]

New Fred.

Well if the business is essential then you would hope for an exemption? Or if it's impossible to pay your own the the welfare fund?

This isnt a dig at anyone here. So sorry if I piss you off.

BUT I'm sick if listening to people saying how awful it is not to have a summer holiday, how that makes life so bad. Jesus christ some of us actually dont have a summer holiday, some if us are too skint. What did we do before covid, when everyone else was abroad for their mandatory 2 weeks in the sun? Well we did fuck all ,we just got on with it. Same as people here will need to get on with it this year.
Theres worse things than not getting your bloody holiday THAT YOU GET EVERY YEAR

Well if the business is essential then you would hope for an exemption?

You'd hope, wouldn't you. But the latest SG guidelines definitely don't include DH business travel as a category so....

I'm sorry to labour these points in such minute detail but this stuff has very real knock-on consequences for people's lives and I feel like we've been expected to sacrifice and sacrifice and sacrifice. No work at all for seven or eight months, almost no financial support, finally there's something but then that is made impossible too.
It's too much. I honestly feel like I'm going to shatter into a million pieces from the stress of it.

Yep @ssd we were actually due to have a holiday abroad last year, which would have been our first for four years. It's not my biggest concern really as it's not exactly dead cert for us anyway.

I'm sorry @MaxNormal, that sounds so stressful

@kurtrussellsbeard

Well if the business is essential then you would hope for an exemption? Or if it's impossible to pay your own the the welfare fund?

Ah yes, I'd assumed businesses/ clients would pay for work related stuff, but was railing about personal compassionate etc travel.

I'd assume, as max said, in this case Scottish SE people (or Scottish businesses) just wouldn't get the job if there was an alternative contractor/ supplier elsewhere that didn't come with a built in cost/ delay relating to quarantine. Or the SE person would just decide not to tender for work outside of Scotland because of the hassle or uncertainty over whether or not they'll be £1750 down or not.

@ssd

I'm sorry *@MaxNormal*, that sounds so stressful

Agree max.

I'm in a rant mood, you can probably tell....

So....why can people go online and book to get the vaccine in England and we cant do that up here??

It's horrible @MaxNormal I'm very sorry for your stress.

Are there still the self employed funds. If he cannot work you would hope that he would be able to access some support. It's just awful.

It's the attitude from folks that are sitting with a guaranteed job and income (including myself) that don't appreciate that it's still awful for folk who have no access to furlough and very little support as self employed businesses.

My poor neighbour is self employed as was her partner. One owns a soft play and hasn't been able to open for nearly a year and the other has a service type business to other businesses that no-one wants as they have no work themselves. Her marriage has broken down due to the stress and she is trying to keep her house and raise her young kids.

People aren't just angry because they can't get to Lanzarote. We've chosen to protect the vulnerable via the vaccination program but are basing our ability to be free on community transmission which is highest in the working age population so the two things are basically in conflict. The numbers wont come down as that isn't the people we are vaccinating. Unless we start to use the incidence in the vaccinated population and hospital/ICU admissions because of covid, then no-one is getting any freedom until the people who have positive PCR tests (mainly the 20-60) age group are vaccinated.

The need to travel is not just for a holiday. My only sibling lives abroad and has done all her adult life. We've not seen each other for 5 years now. I was planning to visit her last year. My elderly MIL lives in the SE of England - dh has not seen her for a year.

I think we need to learn to live with the virus and begin to get children back to school, students back to college/uni and people back to work. I'd accept a ban on international travel if we could have a return to some degree of normality but complete elimination requires restrictions which are too big a price to pay

The self employed have had a shit deal out of all of this I doubt. It's actually been appalling.

Thanks all for the support. Its easier being angry and arguing, kindness just finishes me.

Thinking of everyone struggling with the stress and heartache of this in whatever way you're affected.

This too shall pass eh...

We've chosen to protect the vulnerable via the vaccination program but are basing our ability to be free on community transmission which is highest in the working age population so the two things are basically in conflict.

This is what (among many other things) is annoying me! Although honestly I'd respect it more if they actually came out and said that it's the "case numbers" that is what they are looking at, and these need to get below a certain level before schools/ shops/ hospitality/ social contact can restart. OK, up to now, the cases could largely be used as an early warning as to hospital numbers in a couple of weeks time (assuming in general x% of cases need hospital treatment and x% of those died). But as you say, it's not really the cases we need to be looking at now as we'd hope to see that link between cases leading to hospital leading to death to be broken a bit. We're not seeing it yet, and we don't know how much it will reduce hospital pressure eventually. But surely there can be some acknowledgement in policy that cases are now a less relevant predictor of NHS needs, so we don't need to look at them so closely to the exclusion of everything else?

I have no idea what I typed there. It was supposed to be that the self employed have had the shittest deal no doubt.

@NotAnActualSheep I think it was a case of protecting the most vulnerable/protecting the NHS until the new variant(s) came along. With it being more transmissible I suppose there's more scope now for another new variant to become dominant that evades the vaccine then we are back to square one.

@ssd rant away, I don't think it's my main concern either, mostly that my English family are now 'abroad'.

And maxnormal - I hope we don't see real divergence in uk and Scottish border strategy because it is impractical and everyone will lose.

anon444877 I guess we'll see what comes out in the wash over the next few weeks. It really does make it horribly complicated.

I'm certain people will just lie and give an English address on their passenger locator form and be on their merry way. We'd obviously never contemplate doing that as we're law-abiding but it'll happen for sure.

Of course it will - there is no border and the rest of it is grandstanding - scot gov hasn't been able to enforce the quarantine rules it's set to date. A push for a coordinated approach would be more beneficial without natural borders.

[quote fluffyugg]@NotAnActualSheep I think it was a case of protecting the most vulnerable/protecting the NHS until the new variant(s) came along. With it being more transmissible I suppose there's more scope now for another new variant to become dominant that evades the vaccine then we are back to square one. [/quote]
Yes, fair point. But at the moment all the main variants in the UK are well dealt with by the vaccine, and even the new one (which doesn't seem to be prevalent here I don't think) hasn't been proven not to be - they just don't have the data I understood. The vaccine specialists don't seem worried that they can't modify the vaccines to tailor them to particular variants. I think worrying about a "vaccine resistant, super deadly strain" is cautious, but not particularly likely from what I have picked up (virus biology not being my strong suit, I have to confess!). But at the moment the 3 vaccines we have seem effective at dealing with the current variants, and they all work in different ways, so to me it seems like overkill to react with restrictions as if there's a variant that is resistant to all our current vaccines, spreading rapidly and can't be controlled by isolation/ contact tracing etc.

My rant came from a phone call with someone who was complaining about not getting her 2 or 3 holidays abroad this year ...totally get theres much worse things to rant about. I've seen Martin Lewis saying how bad it is for the people who slip through the cracks. It's just bloody awful.

[quote fluffyugg]@NotAnActualSheep I think it was a case of protecting the most vulnerable/protecting the NHS until the new variant(s) came along. With it being more transmissible I suppose there's more scope now for another new variant to become dominant that evades the vaccine then we are back to square one. [/quote]
Actually, this feels like we're back to square one right now.
Maybe that's what's going on, we're back to square one and they dont want to tell us as people will give up?

My dad is 72 and shielding. He still hasn’t had his vaccine and has no date for it to happen. I’m beyond fed up at listening to how well it’s all going as they head down the different vaccine groups when we are having to fight to find out what will happen with him. He’s not known to the health board and not on their list due to shielding. Which means he has no number and cannot have it at a hub. The same hub who asked people to come in at the weekend as they had excess vaccine. 😳
I know two others at his practice in the same situation. His MSP is looking into it and I emailed Nicola Sturgeon on Friday after her request to let them know of problems. His surgery think it’ll be March before he gets his as they have a huge over 80 population and 100 doses a week delivered. We are in Lothian so not remote either.

There is no evidence to support this super variant theory.