Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Bairnardo]

Could really do with someone from govt telling us where there will one single step to lift the lockdown or whether it will be a gradual process...

Get these daily updates in the fucking bin.

[Alert Mongoose]

[NotThePars]

48 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Within a decade you'll be able to order a autonomous electric car fuelled by renewable energy to pick you up whenever you like. There will be no point in owning one that just sits outside your house 95% of the time. So I read in a magazine anyway.  

I'm on board with vT's pledge to abolish driving but my compromise would be allowing driving to continue but everyone must buy a Tesla and pray it doesn't spontaneously burst into flames on their commute. You tend to find when people launch impassioned defences of driving beyond its utility they adopt this mentality that they're the captain of the ship so make it like their seafaring ancestors and put them in constant danger of dying.

[Aubrey Maturin]

13 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

Could really do with someone from govt telling us where there will one single step to lift the lockdown or whether it will be a gradual process...

Get these daily updates in the fucking bin.

Just be sensible and do your own thing. 

 I went for two lovely long walks today, never within two metres of anyone.  Splendid.

Have to laugh at this whole lockdown exercise once a day thing, both me and mrs frontline, spend 70 plus hours a week within the so called 2m area with colleagues, kids go to school with other key workers who are doing same thing.

Aye but you can only exercise once a day.  What a load of shite.  Start easing the restrictions, let people make informed choices.

.

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Tynierose

[madwullie]

Absolute nutcases 

[Thereisalight..]

It’s in the local paper this week, that South Ayrshire council has paid £13 million in “Covid business grants”. It says the payment is either £10k or £25k if they meet the criteria. Any idea what the criteria is? Theres no way the wee roll shop at the end of the street would have made £10k since lockdown began as an example

[Thereisalight..]

Just now, madwullie said:

Absolute nutcases 

Murica by any chance? 

[resk]

It’s in the local paper this week, that South Ayrshire council has paid £13 million in “Covid business grants”. It says the payment is either £10k or £25k if they meet the criteria. Any idea what the criteria is? Theres no way the wee roll shop at the end of the street would have made £10k since lockdown began as an example

Basically any business owner with enough nous to string a few lies together on an online application gets phree munee. There's no way HMRC or any other government institution can do any kind of checks right now. Same with the furlough thing. Fill yer boots I say.

[welshbairn]

5 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

Murica by any chance? 

I'd say so.

 

[madwullie]

Protesting not having the choice not to wear a mask by saying that masks aren't allowed.  

Edited May 9, 2020 by madwullie

[WhiteRoseKillie]

Road tax and mot plus vat on petrol means easy money for the government though. Not to mention speed cameras for the police.
Car drivers get absolutely smashed for tax despite there being little alternatives.
Scrap cars and bring back electric trains and trams. If there was an alternative I would use it.

This. Commuting to a shitey office in a city centre isn't exactly my working life. I work for HMPPS, and the skills they want me for are required at another jail right now. This time next year I might well be doing the same job at the jail a hundred and fifty yards from my house.*
Conversely,I may be working at a similar prison, in the opposite direction.

* not an exaggeration. Twenty three years without using one litre of diesel.

[dirty dingus]

22 hours ago, super_carson said:

 

Telling everyone to cycle, I fucking hate cycling.  I find  I zone out all the time and have had far too many crashes. It's basically Covid wrapped in lycra. The govt are trying to exterminate the population with their advice.

[craigkillie]

I'm generally very much in favour of essentially moving towards binning private cars and encouraging people towards public transport, but the only way it can work is if it comes hand in hand with policy change in a number of areas, but particularly in terms of the concept of what public transport is. At the moment it essentially operates on the same rules as business, where routes only operate if they are profitable, and only at times which are profitable, not if they are useful, which aren't the same thing. Train and bus services in most of Scotland are awful, and nearly everything is routed through cities rather than being designed to connect towns.

They also have to make it as easy as possible for people to ditch their cars. I live right next to a train station (it was one of the reasons I chose the area) and can easily commute via train - it's also about 70 minutes walk/25 minutes run if I want to, which I probably will post-corona. However, my wife has a healthcare job where she is required to drive around to people's houses, often with large heavy pieces of equipment. Her work (a local council authority) do offer pool cars, but for some reason these are located in an industrial estate 15/20 minutes walk from the office, and are generally not well maintained or even cleaned regularly. Therefore, for obvious reasons she and her colleagues generally take their own cars to work, even those who live quite nearby.

She is desperate to buy an electric car soon, but we only have on-street parking and the local area has dreadfully low provision of charging points, so again people are being discouraged from doing the "right" thing.

Edited May 9, 2020 by craigkillie

[Todd_is_God]

55 minutes ago, Tynierose said:

Have to laugh at this whole lockdown exercise once a day thing, both me and mrs frontline, spend 70 plus hours a week within the so called 2m area with colleagues, kids go to school with other key workers who are doing same thing.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8237633/Children-dont-pass-coronavirus-French-boy-did-not-spread-virus-172-people.html

I remember seeing this and thought it was quite interesting. Closing schools may not be very impactful at all.

[Granny Danger]

5 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8237633/Children-dont-pass-coronavirus-French-boy-did-not-spread-virus-172-people.html

I remember seeing this and thought it was quite interesting. Closing schools may not be very impactful at all.

It’s interesting to see the text of that link, the text of the headline and then the text of the article.

Or at least it would be interesting if you were not familiar with the concept of click bait.

 

[Forest_Fifer]

I can’t really take public transport to work as I work in Livingston and live in Edinburgh, it would add hours onto my day. I don’t mind working from home a lot more, it’s saving me a fortune and I haven’t had to fill up my car for two months.

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of it, any policy to penalise drivers would be massively unpopular. The workplace car parking levy, if it’s ever introduced, will be a huge negative to those who have to pay it. People hate paying for parking and having to pay to park at work will drive people apoplectic.

Also, to move people’s workplaces and homes closer together requires huge societal change - the housing market, the job market, the travel/tourism sector, education would all have to change massively. People’s expectations, wants and needs from housing would have to develop a lot. Not to say it can’t happen but it would be a massive change.

I do think that what happens post Covid might be counter intuitive. When the internet became widespread the expectation was that it would end the office as people could log in anywhere and work. What actually happened was the opposite with cities becoming hubs for tech companies and employees. Maybe something similarly unpredicted will happen in the next few years.

Nottingham did a workplace parking levy to help pay for the trams, but it was the company that had to pay it, based on how many spaces they had. Boots were fortunate that they are outside the city boundary, or it would have cost them a fortune.

[Forest_Fifer]

Absolute nutcases 

I want one of their waterproof real wood stain resistant carpets.

[Am Featha Taigh Nan Clach]

29 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

I'm generally very much in favour of essentially moving towards binning private cars and encouraging people towards public transport, but the only way it can work is if it comes hand in hand with policy change in a number of areas, but particularly in terms of the concept of what public transport is. At the moment it essentially operates on the same rules as business, where routes only operate if they are profitable, and only at times which are profitable, not if they are useful, which aren't the same thing. Train and bus services in most of Scotland are awful, and nearly everything is routed through cities rather than being designed to connect towns.

I've cut this down just to save space.

My wife's place of work is difficult to get to via public transport. It's about 20-25 mins by car from our current address but 1 hr 30 min plus by public transport.

When the general consensus is that shorter hours and more leisure time is desirable, adding hours per week (in her case 10+ hrs) to a commute is madness. When electric cars are cheaper and have bigger ranges we'll certainly be buying them. 100% of electricity from renewables plus electric cars is the ideal scenario

[cyderspaceman]

1 hour ago, Thereisalight.. said:

It’s in the local paper this week, that South Ayrshire council has paid £13 million in “Covid business grants”. It says the payment is either £10k or £25k if they meet the criteria. Any idea what the criteria is? Theres no way the wee roll shop at the end of the street would have made £10k since lockdown began as an example

I worked in a bookshop in 2003 that took £ 350 -£500 per day, 7 days a week.

(I was only part time)

10k over 6 weeks, now, doesn't seem unreasonable for food and sundries.  That's all.

[cyderspaceman]

2 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Within a decade you'll be able to order a autonomous electric car fuelled by renewable energy to pick you up whenever you like. There will be no point in owning one that just sits outside your house 95% of the time. So I read in a magazine anyway.  

Makes sense but folk won't want a car with someone's chip poke and who knows what else in it when they go to use it.  #toomanycuntsintheworld