Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[William of Walworth]

I did tell you, they are all sat at home counting their fucking bonuses

You can't possibly have enough information to know that. So you can only have got your 'information' from tabloids and right talk shows, whose business model literally relies on them stirring up indignation about things that they've invented. Now they can't blame EU migrants for stealing jobs and healthcare, or Eurocrats for making your vacuum cleaner too weak, they're just reaching for new targets for you to get annoyed about, because annoyance drives consumption of their 'news' products, while helping the bosses target people for political gain. Some people are easily manipulated. Try not to be one of them.

I've no idea where in this thread that original throwaway one-liner from 'Russ' was posted , but that kind of pig-ignorant, tabloid-headline fuelled bigotry really gets my fucking goat.

I'm guessing it was aimed at ..... who?

NHS workera? Public-sector workers in general? 'Featherbedded' Civil Servants in particular?

But get your fucking facts straight, Russ, and listen to some real-world facts from actual workers in those categories (some of them post on here!)
Or listen to people in those sectors who (in real life) are activists for Trade Unions in those sectors?

Then you might not risk coming over as a Sun- or Mail=headline recycling twat!

 

[StoneRoad]

The pandemic hasn't really proved the long term viability of anything, as far as WFH is concerned.

There are some who would probably disagree with you.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I'm guessing it was aimed at ..... who?

doctors / GPs

 

[William of Walworth]

doctors / GPs

I'd rather pay attention to posts from kropotkin (and from other well-informed Urbans) in that case

 

[redsquirrel]

Dunno about that. Seems more like they're pandering to business, as per usual.

More pandering to their own prejudices. Certainly some sectors will push people to move back onsite but others will see opportunities in requiring less office space.

 

[andysays]

More pandering to their own prejudices. Certainly some sectors will push people to move back onsite but others will see opportunities in requiring less office space.

This is true, but it's also worth remembering that there's a difference between individual organisations, which may indeed see opportunities and benefits, and the overall economy.

There's a significant (I don't know how significant, TBH) sector of the economy which exists to serve the everyday "needs" of commuting office workers, not just the obvious coffee shops, but also sellers of office type clothes, and if there is a substantial longer term shift away from office working, that sector will be affected.

 

[kabbes]

I don’t know any company in the insurance Square Mile that’s wanting to return 100% to the office. It ranges between aiming at 3 days a week in the office and having a lot of staff permanently from home. Not only is office space incredibly expensive, companies have also seen that productivity has risen on bread-and-butter day-to-day work. They want to keep that. The issue is that they also know there are long-term benefits (or even necessities) behind the chance encounters and chit-chat that comprises office life. The trick is to find a way to mix the two (ie so-called hybrid working) but that comes with its own new challenges too.

I write and talk a lot about this stuff in my professional life so it’s too exhausting to do it too much on here too. But a lot of the problem is that different sectors of people have fundamentally different ontological understandings of what “work” is. A lot of the discussion about what should happen next is thus starting from different underlying assumptions about what the world is and what it means, but those discussing it don’t realise that. Their conversations are thus just blowing past each other. The details are trying to be settled without resolving first what the purpose is.

The discussions that are happening (across all society, not just my working area) are also incredibly divorced from other big discourses of our time, like so-called “diversity and inclusion” and climate change. This really just points up the individualised liberal nature all these separate discussions are framed through, but even so it’s shocking just how little recognition is being given to wider debates. Companies are making public statements about encouraging inclusive environments, for example, and of working towards net zero emissions. In the next breath, they’re declaring that everybody should get back to the office. These things are not joined up.

 

[teuchter]

There are some who would probably disagree with you.

Of course, but I wonder if some of them might have a different view 2 or 5 or 10 years from now.

All I'd say is that what's been proven is that we can get through 1 or 2 years with a lot of people working from home, and the sky hasn't fallen in. I'd agree that in many ways, it seems to have worked better than many might have expected, and there's no doubt it will change working patterns from now on.

But what hasn't been proven is how sustainable it is in the long term. A year or two isn't long enough to get an idea of what the long term effects might be, either from an employee or employer point of view. You can coast through a year or two based on relationships that predated everyone doing WFH. What about all the training that used to happen informally on the job, that lets knowledge pass from more senior to more junior members of a team or company? You can probably put that on hold for a couple of years and not see major effects, but the picture may be quite different further down the line.

And I expect that there are many of individuals who have so far thought that WFH is great. But their view might change when they see that some of their colleagues who are choosing to go into the office are getting opprtunities they aren't, because they are missing out on a load of incidental chat and discussion that happens in person at the workplace. Perhaps as the rest of the world returns starts to return to "normal" they start to feel the sense of isolation and monotony that a lot of people who WFH long term can find difficult. Maybe they currently live in a house with space for a dedicated home office, but need to move somewhere where they can't afford that, and find they are now trying to work from a space shared with others. Maybe they have kids and working at home without distraction becomes difficult.

There are lots of things that we don't know yet. The pandemic hasn't proven the long term viability of anything because it was just a short term situation.

 

[kabbes]

That’s all true, but rather than thinking the genie is going to be put back into the bottle, it is why companies are working so hard on trying to work out how to make the hybrid model work. There are serious problems to be worked through but don’t kid yourself — 100% working in the office also has serious problems. A lot of those problems were invisible because of taken-for-granted norms before the pandemic but they’re out in the open now.

 

[teuchter]

Yes I'm sure that hybrid approaches will become very common. It will be interesting to see what happens over time though. My prediction is that over the next few years there will be a number of companies that realise they were too hasty in moving to largely WFH models. They will probably be the small/medium ones (for whom the cost savings are particularly attractive) rather than the big ones.

 

[_Russ_]

You cant build houses from home, or construct roads, or farm, or produce pretty much anything of real worth on a more than tiny scale.
If there is a re-balancing of socio-economics then it needs to be a massive cull of the types of jobs that wfh lends itself to, bureaucracy and trivial legislation that supports many of these jobs is of little real worth to anyone but those getting paid to do them

 

[Sue]

You cant build houses from home, or construct roads, or farm, or produce pretty much anything of real worth on a more than tiny scale.
If there is a re-balancing of socio-economics then it needs to be a massive cull of the types of jobs that wfh lends itself to, bureaucracy and trivial legislation that supports many of these jobs is of little real worth to anyone but those getting paid to do them

That's a bit of a sweeping statement .

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

You cant build houses from home, or construct roads, or farm, or produce pretty much anything of real worth on a more than tiny scale.
If there is a re-balancing of socio-economics then it needs to be a massive cull of the types of jobs that wfh lends itself to, bureaucracy and trivial legislation that supports many of these jobs is of little real worth to anyone but those getting paid to do them

What century do you think we're in?

 

[Elpenor]

Lol I do one of those jobs that people can easily do from home.

If my job didn’t get done people would not have a binding reason to work as they wouldn’t receive payment for their labour, society as we know it and the government could collapse. Must be said the argument for not doing my job is actually quite persuasive

 

[Brainaddict]

You cant build houses from home, or construct roads, or farm, or produce pretty much anything of real worth on a more than tiny scale.
If there is a re-balancing of socio-economics then it needs to be a massive cull of the types of jobs that wfh lends itself to, bureaucracy and trivial legislation that supports many of these jobs is of little real worth to anyone but those getting paid to do them

Do you think your bins can get picked up without some desk-jockeys behind the scenes? Do you think the NHS can employ a million people and spend £150bn a year without a small army of people to organise how the money is distributed? It's true a lot of the useful work can't be done from desks, but even building companies can't operate without a certain percentage of their people sat behind desks.

 

[cupid_stunt]

You cant build houses from home, or construct roads, or farm, or produce pretty much anything of real worth on a more than tiny scale.
If there is a re-balancing of socio-economics then it needs to be a massive cull of the types of jobs that wfh lends itself to, bureaucracy and trivial legislation that supports many of these jobs is of little real worth to anyone but those getting paid to do them

Yeah, let's cull all those pointless office jobs.

Perhaps we could start with the wages departments? Next, the accounts departments, I mean what company needs these pointless people to invoice their customers, it's not like they need the money coming in to pay the wages, because there's no pointless people left to pay the wages anyway.

This is brilliant thinking, Russ for PM.

 

[Chilli.s]

You cant build houses from home, or construct roads, or farm, or produce pretty much anything of real worth on a more than tiny scale.
If there is a re-balancing of socio-economics then it needs to be a massive cull of the types of jobs that wfh lends itself to, bureaucracy and trivial legislation that supports many of these jobs is of little real worth to anyone but those getting paid to do them

A re-balance rather than a cull. Valuing people by what they do and how what they do relates to other workers as a whole does have big discrepancies

 

[_Russ_]

Thanks, Thats one vote for the league against money for old rope then

 

[Orang Utan]

_Russ_ sort of has a point - there are so many bullshit jobs out there. #notallwfh though of course

 

[Teaboy]

I think just because you don't understand someone's job it doesn't mean to say it doesn't have more value than simple money. As someone who works in "building houses" I see I get a pass as someone doing a proper job though (even if I am doing it from home).

Anyway we're moving away from the purpose of the thread and besides there is a WFH thread.

 

[elbows]

Companies are making public statements about encouraging inclusive environments, for example, and of working towards net zero emissions. In the next breath, they’re declaring that everybody should get back to the office. These things are not joined up.

I like joined up thinking and I expect all sorts of things to merge into an overarching story of the century, its just not clear to me when that will become undeniably obvious to everyone.

Work is certainly part of the problem when it comes to energy and climate, and in stark contrast to people moaning about 'pointless jobs', I can imagine a future where people end up being subsidised not to work/to work much less/work in a less energy intensive way. But there are many variables that could make my assumptions about that faulty.

The extent to which the pandemic will act as a catalyst is unclear to me. Its certainly provided some real world demonstrations and data about certain things. I suspect that given the amount of jobs that were disrupted, and the changes to levels of travel, there will be some dissapointment as to the limited extent to which energy use reduced during the period.

 

[_Russ_]

The extent to which the pandemic will act as a catalyst is unclear to me.

No crystal ball here either, but considering that even whilst in the middle of a pandemic our governors thought they would offer as little a pay rise as possible to the people actually dealing with it doesnt lead me to think much will change untill there is civil war in this country

 

[Supine]

lead me to think much will change untill there is civil war in this country

So, next tuesday then

 

[cupid_stunt]

So, next tuesday then

I had it booked in for Tuesday week.

 

[StoneRoad]

I had it booked in for Tuesday week.

Are you sure ? I thought it was on Thursday ...

 

[redsquirrel]

Yeah, let's cull all those pointless office jobs.

Perhaps we could start with the wages departments? Next, the accounts departments, I mean what company needs these pointless people to invoice their customers, it's not like they need the money coming in to pay the wages, because there's no pointless people left to pay the wages anyway.

This is brilliant thinking, Russ for PM.

Happy to cull those in the the HR departments mind. Literally.

 

[maomao]

There used to be a poster who posted both as 'Russ' + some numbers and then as Oddjob. Short posts, didn't make a lot of sense. I wonder if it's the same fella (pretty sure he'd be due another chance after 17 years).

 

[Yossarian]

There used to be a poster who posted both as 'Russ' + some numbers and then as Oddjob. Short posts, didn't make a lot of sense. I wonder if it's the same fella (pretty sure he'd be due another chance after 17 years).

17 years?? Could be Son of Oddjob by now.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

wtf is going on about getting lateral flow tests?

i'm having to do one a day at the moment due to hospital visiting, so rapidly running out of the box full i got from my employer.

i went in to a pharmacist and they said i need a QR code (i'm not sure my phone handles such things - it is a smart phone but i don't do e-mail on it)

i've just tried to order a set, and it said it would send a code to my mobile (it sends the test results to that) and nothing has happened

anyone got any ideas what's going on / how i get some?

 

[maomao]

wtf is going on about getting lateral flow tests?

i'm having to do one a day at the moment due to hospital visiting, so rapidly running out of the box full i got from my employer.

i went in to a pharmacist and they said i need a QR code (i'm not sure my phone handles such things - it is a smart phone but i don't do e-mail on it)

i've just tried to order a set, and it said it would send a code to my mobile (it sends the test results to that) and nothing has happened

anyone got any ideas what's going on / how i get some?

How did they say they were sending the qr code and what details do they have for you. It's really unlikely they mean a text and probably meant an email.

Any random free QR reader off Google will work if it's an android phone with a camera.