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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

In the flats two doors down someone's set up a massive marquee covering almost all of the very large communal garden and there were at least 50 people, going on their shouting, and very loud music on a sound system from 3pm until just now. It's not a spontaneous party of a few friends that got a bit out of hand - it's a massive do that is essentially indoors. The odds of them wearing masks or socially distancing are zero.

How desperate for a party can you be to be that inconsiderate? And whichever tenant arranged it will probably have breached their tenancy, too because I'm fairly sure you're not allowed to have that kind of party in a communal garden even in non-corona times.

I'm not exactly hardline about masks or social gatherings but this is taking the fucking piss.
 
Australias financial year goes from June 30th to July 1st. This year the Australian tax office ( ATO) made it easy to claim for working from home, and included a claim item that included utilities etc and you just multiplied by the number of hours whf. Obviously if you want to claim over and above that you can do that too.
 
I have quite a few cardboard boxes as well. The recycling only take them if it is in the bag The council issued. These bags have all gone missing. You can’t get a replacement because of COVID-19. Yes that is basicly what the website says. last time I left loads of cardboard out in a black bin liner, they didn’t take it And it got soaked. So fuck it, I’ve just put it in the regular rubbish now.
 
I have quite a few cardboard boxes as well. The recycling only take them if it is in the bag The council issued. These bags have all gone missing. You can’t get a replacement because of COVID-19. Yes that is basicly what the website says. last time I left loads of cardboard out in a black bin liner, they didn’t take it And it got soaked. So fuck it, I’ve just put it in the regular rubbish now.
call the gangstas
 
Sad to see urban turning into a Tory stronghold. You’ll be flaming me for attacking capitalism next...
You're not attacking capitalism though, are you?

You're attacking individual people who have to live within the capitalist system as it currently exists for the (admittedly imperfect) decisions and compromises we all have to make to get by within that system.

Unless you are completely separate from that system yourself, and have all your material and other needs met by a commune of magic rainbow unicorns, that makes you look like a bit of a dick.
 
In the flats two doors down someone's set up a massive marquee covering almost all of the very large communal garden and there were at least 50 people, going on their shouting, and very loud music on a sound system from 3pm until just now. It's not a spontaneous party of a few friends that got a bit out of hand - it's a massive do that is essentially indoors. The odds of them wearing masks or socially distancing are zero.

How desperate for a party can you be to be that inconsiderate? And whichever tenant arranged it will probably have breached their tenancy, too because I'm fairly sure you're not allowed to have that kind of party in a communal garden even in non-corona times.

I'm not exactly hardline about masks or social gatherings but this is taking the fucking piss.
More than 30 people in a gathering is currently illegal except under specific circumstances, which it sounds like this doesn’t meet. You’d be perfectly entitled to shop ‘em.
 
Australias financial year goes from June 30th to July 1st. This year the Australian tax office ( ATO) made it easy to claim for working from home, and included a claim item that included utilities etc and you just multiplied by the number of hours whf. Obviously if you want to claim over and above that you can do that too.
The idea that it's the people working from home who need the extra support is one of my bugbears in all this. Transport into work is going to cost more than a bit of electricity for most people and they are the ones at greater risk.
 
My recycling wasn’t taken once and a note was left to say I had left it ‘incorrectly’. How someone can leave cardboard in a bin incorrectly I do not know but there we are.
Where I used to live, they had a similar system - a black tag would be put around the neck of the offending bag, but rarely gave any kind of indication as to what was wrong.

It's even worse, now - they have a massively complex system with about 5 categories of waste, and any "foreign" item in any of the categories results in the whole lot being rejected.

I suspect it's counterproductive: what I used to do with the black-tagged bags was, if I couldn't see what was wrong, simply to dump the whole thing into a black bin liner and put it out with the general refuse, and I suspect a lot of people probably don't even bother giving the recycling thing a go in the first place - just bung it all into black bags and screw the recycling.

Which they've attempted to address by rationing the number of black (now grey) bags you're allowed to put out.
 
Half my flat is now fucking Amazon boxes. I hate Amazon and yet I need stuff and they can send it to me and I can barely cook fucking rice or put my laundry away so I'm not going to feel guilty about taking the easiest route to buy a wok. That doesn't mean I don't still hate them.
Also we have amazon lockers at work! So convenient :oops:
 
I see the Telegraph have been reporting that they are going to kill Public Health England by merging it and Test & Trace together into a new entity, allegedly modelled after the Robert Koch Institute in Germany.

I dont actually have access to the Telegraph article but I've read about it elsewhere and here is the link anyway Hancock axes ‘failing’ Public Health England

It was clear even from SAGE minutes that PHE was quickly established as not being up to the task of responding effectively to this pandemic, so it facing the chop is not surprising. The timing of how they do it and the detail of what they create instead are likely to be cause for concern under this government though. For a start Dido Harding is tipped for the leadership job in the new entity.

Here is a followup Guardian article where people are complaining that PHE is a scapegoat for government failings. My opinion is that yes they will use it as a scapegoat, but PHE's failings were real too so its not all unfair criticism. The buck still stops with the government in any case though, and its not PHEs own fault that their budget and resources werent up to the task.

 
It was clear even from SAGE minutes that PHE was quickly established as not being up to the task of responding effectively to this pandemic, so it facing the chop is not surprising. The timing of how they do it and the detail of what they create instead are likely to be cause for concern under this government though. For a start Dido Harding is tipped for the leadership job in the new entity.
What really irritates me about this idea that, when something has failed, the best thing to do is to scrap it and start again is that it throws the baby out with the bathwater, only to replace it with something that hasn't really been built on the lessons learned from the failure, but is all about some Government Minister or something needing to be seen to Do Something (Anything), rather than take a measured view and see whether what they already have can be fixed.

Except, as you allude, this isn't really about anything other than creating a little fiefdom to be left in the "care" of one of their cronies.
 
What really irritates me about this idea that, when something has failed, the best thing to do is to scrap it and start again is that it throws the baby out with the bathwater, only to replace it with something that hasn't really been built on the lessons learned from the failure, but is all about some Government Minister or something needing to be seen to Do Something (Anything), rather than take a measured view and see whether what they already have can be fixed.

The baby was kept last time though, in 2013 when the former and successful Health Protection Agency was folded into Public Health England along with a load of other stuff. That's when the problems started IMO, as it allowed senior management to lose focus and get distracted by anti-obesity campaigning etc, allowing disease outbreaks to be relegated to the background. It definitely needs a gouging out rather than a bit of fixing - hopefully the announced merger will just be a stop-gap until the current pandemic is behind us.
 
On this point, there is a book I want to buy currently. I went to bookshops such as Waterstones and WH Smith to see if I could see the book there, more to see if I want to buy it or not, but they don't stock it. I imagine that if they don't stock it, the one local, smaller, bookshop near here (in a different town to the one I went to) probably don't have it in stock either. I could get them to order it, but doubt they do delivery to home. I could order from Waterstones or WH Smiths, but can't see that they are much different from Amazon. I am sure they have their own tax dodges and would likely be more expensive.

Hive.co.uk - Books, eBooks, DVDs, Blu-ray, Stationery, Music CDs is worth a look, home delivery, no delivery charge & they will donate a percentage to your favourite local participating bookshop.

(I'll often buy on Ebay if its significantly cheaper including postage, but I use hive if I can. Also during the early days of lockdown they had a policy of one book per order to make it safer for their warehouse staff - :thumbs: from me)
 

This is a bit of a relief in terms of them not being successful in covering things up, figures will be published each week with deaths within 60 days of a positive test or with covid on the death certificate (with daily figures with 28 days since a positive test) . Although why they couldnt have just said they were gonna do this before given the boost its given to plandemic types...
 
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The idea that it's the people working from home who need the extra support is one of my bugbears in all this. Transport into work is going to cost more than a bit of electricity for most people and they are the ones at greater risk.
In Germany you can claim tax back against a spare room in your dwelling used as an office for wfh. Not if you don't have a spare room and have to work in your kitchen.
No tax relief either if you have to travel to work.
 
A deeply abstruse question about Covid stats, which I suspect only elbows will have a hope of answering. If there is an outbreak on a ship in UK waters, to which - if any - local authority will they attribute the figures?

Asking 'cos I've been looking at the recent local infection stats by MSOA, and they appear to sum to fewer than the overall infection figure for the city (Hull) as a whole. I'm wondering whether the outbreak among crew of one of the ferries might account for it.
 
I dont know, but I suppose my presumption would be that they arent counted in that level of stats.

This is because I assume they are using home address for that data. And I have some vague memory that even at a higher level some deaths would be missing. By this I mean I've got the feeling that when looking at things like ONS stats, the individual death counts for England and Wales only included residents of those countries, but the combined England & Wales number also included non-residents.

Anyway I could be wrong but I think its generally to be expected that some cases and deaths dont end up in the highly localised stats.
 
So I've just sent off my free DIY NHS testing kit which just tests to see if you have it or not. Putting the swab around my tonsils was a gag-tastic experience and it wasn't pleasant putting the swab up my hooter either but the package was impressively put together. I had it because there was a spare kit available but I really want to do the antibodies test if I can.
 
So I've just sent off my free DIY NHS testing kit which just tests to see if you have it or not. Putting the swab around my tonsils was a gag-tastic experience and it wasn't pleasant putting the swab up my hooter either but the package was impressively put together. I had it because there was a spare kit available but I really want to do the antibodies test if I can.
I had the antibodies test a couple of weeks ago. I had a routine blood test, and they offered the antibodies test as well, so I said yes. It came back negative, which I knew.
 
Probably needs a new thread really. PHE gone to be replaced by a body overseen by Dido Harding, a Tory peer and who has a husband on a think thank that called for the NHS to be scrapped. FFS.
The new chair of the National Institute for Health Protection, which will be charged with preventing future outbreaks of infectious diseases, Diana, the Baroness Harding of Winscombe, in a previous role as the CEO of 'TalkTalk' voted shoddiest customer service in 2011:

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