Guilt Free Railing 19

[WouldBeGood]

Rail away!

No judgment, no resilience wankery.

Equal opportunity railing 😃

Could this be the last thread..?!

Well I'm not allowing my DS to be vaccinated. You'd think NHS Lothian would have better things to spend their money on, but clearly not. Also debating whether to actually go through with my much delayed booster ... seems v little point since I actually had Covid in Jan.

I sort of think if I want to improve my health I should actually do the hard thing and lose a stone or so ...

@Scianel

runningpink I'm genuinely not sure but I absolutely hate the trend for masking hospitality staff etc while customers sit unmasked, it's psychologically quite unpleasant and I really hope they don't to the same to supermarket workers. Obviously the workers should be welcome to wear one if it's their preference.

Yes! There’s a real kind of Victorian “well of course we don’t let the help use the front door” vibe to it.

I have a DC in P3 who’s heard about the vaccine from school (I think just mentioned because they watch Newsround?) and is worried as hates needles, but also doesn’t want to get ill. Our approach is that given it’s just an offer and the risk/benefit balance seems so fine, we’ll let DC choose once it’s available.

@GoldenOmber - interested in your view that DC could chose? I'm not sure my DS could make a informed decision (similiar age). He certainly wouldn't be able to conduct a risk/benefit analysis or be able to understand fully that there could be side effects ...it would be more along the lines of doing it because he want to 'protect others' or because his friends are.

My primary age DC absolutely couldn't make an informed decision about his health, which is why parental consent is needed in the first place. He can't assess risks and tends to still take everything he's told at face value, so if he was shown that video he'd just accept it uncritically. To be fair, there is never any pressure to get the flu spray and the local nurses won't do it without parental permission - as we discovered when his permission slip went missing one year and only found out about it because he mentioned he'd been turned away.

Because, in my view, the risks are very very low but the benefits are also very very low. So I do not feel particularly strongly about it one way or the other, and therefore would be fine with whatever DC decided. In the same way that I generally let DC say yes or no to having Calpol for a headache, but wouldn’t let them make the call on say having antibiotics for an infection.

I appreciate that if you as a parent feel particularly strongly about the risks outweighing the benefits for this age group then you wouldn’t be happy for a child to make a decision on it. I would probably have the same approach if I did feel like that.

Although unfortunately I know quite a few parents who tend to take medical opinion as gospel and would also accept that video uncritically at face value. Which is why I'm quite angry that such a biased video has been made in the first place!

Cross post @GoldenOmber. I think your thought process sounds reasonable.

I’d be a bit pissed off if school was showing them videos about why they should get it, mind.

And having just seen that NHS Lothian video am very about why the government is presenting this to kids as if it’s a done deal they’ll be getting it? That’s not the usual approach to child vaccines which parents can opt into but aren’t part of the standard vaccine schedule (chickenpox etc), is it?

As with the “isolating isn’t legally mandatory but we’ll deliberately blur the boundaries between law and guidance in how we tell you” approach, this might get more people to do what they want in the short term but it’ll just erode trust in the long term.

There's so much about this vaccine rollout that's unprecedented @GoldenOmber, some of it by necessity of course (like the speed of development and approval and the mass roll out) but also a fair bit of political interference which can't be a good thing. I've never seen ministers pressurising the JCVI to approve a vaccine as both Sturgeon and Javid did, I've never seen the JCVI refuse to recommend a vaccine (as they did for teenagers) only for the CMOs to step in with a non medical reason for mass rollout, and I've never seen a vaccine with little/no clinical benefit be rolled out just to reassure people.

I really think there's a danger parents will conflate the COVID vaccine (no real benefit but offered anyway) with the others on the schedule (there for good reason and important in disease prevention) and conclude they're all equally important/unimportant. All the more danger in Scotland where they are apparently treating it as a full rollout even though it's supposed to be more optional than usual.

Well. Latest rail. We are running a big school trip to a big theatre next week. This doesn't affect kids unless 18 and we are taking younger kids.

In spite of them being cancelled the theatre still wants vaccine passports from staff. I am very cross. What on Earth is the point in ending regulations if theatres and other places keep on with them.

What a faff cis cannot think why they'd want to keep vaccine passports....

That does indeed sound bonkers. I thought everyone had accepted vaccine passports were pointless with omicron. And as so few adults will be there anyway, what is the point?!

I see the SG is in trouble (again) with the Information Commissioner over the passport app But they just seem to have brushed it off with "oh dear, never mind" . They are just so arrogant over all this... They were warned before it launched that it didn't meet the regulations in terms of clarity for the users (when they finally deigned to tell the ICO, 3 days before it was launched) but didn't do anything about it then, and still haven't done anything... The only thing they changed was not letting the facial recognition software company use our faces to improve their product without giving anyone notice or an opt out or anything... Ffs that they even thought that would be fine until they were told no!! I'm unreasonably annoyed about this, even though I'm pretty blasé about these kind of things... It was an app that they were requiring thousands of people to use to go about their lives, not some voluntary thing that people could choose not to use, and they couldn't even be arsed to make sure it protected peoples data properly and legally...

Also, as a stealth boast rail, I've been offered two very different jobs, and now I have to decide which one to take and how to decline the other one without pissing anyone off. Arse. Hate that sort of thing

Well done @ResilienceWanker . Feel free to boast stealthily away - I'm sure the railers are all chuffed for you.

Yes, I’ve seen the data story but like you say, think they’ll be just ‘meh’. I didn’t download any of the apps. I absolutely take no joy in saying ‘told you so’ but honestly at the time, it seemed so obvious they were playing in areas that involved data, with them having no experience of it. They should have bought into all the existing framework, instead they tried to create their own whilst pissing away public money . This is just the tip of the iceberg, so much is going to come out about mistakes made. NS is going to wish they’d just followed one U.K. plan, so the liability, apologies and potential legal cases could at least be shared between them all (I predict ministers with covid portfolios could be thrown under bus in the coming days). My Friday rail- before I switch off for the w’end’ is the arrogance of folk to assume they know better than others and that every decision they made was the right one, without listening to the views of the public or treating us like grown ups.
Now, onwards to the weekend🍷…

@ResilienceWanker

Also, as a stealth boast rail, I've been offered two very different jobs, and now I have to decide which one to take and how to decline the other one without pissing anyone off. Arse. Hate that sort of thing

This is a great one for a Friday- congrats on both offers! You have time to think over the weekend? Much preferred to a Monday offer, decide by midweek type thing. But yes, awkward dilemma.

Oh, congratulations @ResilienceWanker! Well done, and I’m sure you’ll handle it well!

Don't worry about the legal side of things with the Scottish government because they have engaged a legal team at a cost of £250k. That's 1/4 million of our money to bat away any criticisms.

www.scotsman.com/news/politics/questions-over-governments-exorbitant-legal-fees-ahead-of-covid-19-inquiry-3575608

They've certainly got form for expensive legal debacles!

Well done @ResilienceWanker ahh decisions, decisions....

Thanks all Yes, a matrix of pros and cons is in preparation to have a look at over the weekend, but meanwhile the is decanted...

@LizzieMacQueen

Don't worry about the legal side of things with the Scottish government because they have engaged a legal team at a cost of £250k. That's 1/4 million of our money to bat away any criticisms.

www.scotsman.com/news/politics/questions-over-governments-exorbitant-legal-fees-ahead-of-covid-19-inquiry-3575608

Oh, ffs. Well, that's reassuring that everything is going to be open and honest and above board, with nothing swept under the carpet...

They must spend a fortune on legal bills: they’re never away from the courts

Here to rail about the fcking UK Government changing immigration rules today so Ukrainians cannot move here unless they have family here already. Despicable.
The video of the babies (being kept alive with oxygen) having to move to a hospital basement just broke my heart today. Putin is insane. So many innocents will die because of a 70 year old's fcked up understanding of the world around him.

All I can find on this starry is that they've extended Ukrainians on temp visas and relaxed rules for people with family already here?

www.politico.eu/article/uk-eases-visa-rules-for-brits-closest-relatives-fleeing-ukraine/