Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Monkey Tennis]

7 minutes ago, Stellaboz said:

Is Granny still spewing his "if yer no with us yer a Tory" pish? Fucking minter.

Not what I'm seeing.

It's legitimate, however, to point out that much of the anti-restriction sentiment expressed on here (not particularly that relating to football) reflects an individualistic, essentially right wing standpoint. 

That fact Is demonstrated in the posturing of those who make up the Tories' own militant tendency.

[No_Problemo]

4 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Not what I'm seeing.

It's legitimate, however, to point out that much of the anti-restriction sentiment expressed on here (not particularly that relating to football) reflects an individualistic, essentially right wing standpoint. 

That fact Is demonstrated in the posturing of those who make up the Tories' own militant tendency.

This is utter fucking nonsense. 
 

I’m not selfish, your selfish vibes too.

[Monkey Tennis]

3 minutes ago, No_Problemo said:

 

I’m not selfish, your selfish vibes too.

I don't know what this means.

[djchapsticks]

6 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Not what I'm seeing.

It's legitimate, however, to point out that much of the anti-restriction sentiment expressed on here (not particularly that relating to football) reflects an individualistic, essentially right wing standpoint. 

That fact Is demonstrated in the posturing of those who make up the Tories' own militant tendency.

Everyones's standpoint is individualistic and selfish in their own way.

You too will have selfish reasons for your belief structure and point of view. You're deluding yourself if you believe you do not.

[Bairnardo]

This is utter fucking nonsense. 
 
I’m not selfish, your selfish vibes too.

Its a just a more subtle energy to saying the same puerile pish as Danger.

If someone can clearly tell me how its selfish to call out the hypocrisy involved in the football restrictions, in the context of the fucking government mouthpieces repeatedly admitting that they made up arbitrary numbers, to make a point, when next to nobody is in hospital or dying from this virus, agaisnt which the overwhleming majority have been vaccinated, im all fucking ears.

There is ZERO scientific or public health reason why I am sat in the house this afternoon instead of booing my team in the flesh. These idiots can keep insulting everyone elses intelligence all they want and continue patting themselves on the back, but they remain conpletely and objectively wrong.

[Michael W]

"I don't think people should be barred from going to the football". 

"HORRIBLE RIGHT-WING TORY!"

 

[Monkey Tennis]

1 minute ago, Bairnardo said:

Its a just a more subtle energy to saying the same puerile pish as Danger.

If someone can clearly tell me how its selfish to call out the hypocrisy involved in the football restrictions, in the context of the fucking government mouthpieces repeatedly admitting that they made up arbitrary numbers, to make a point, when next to nobody is in hospital or dying from this virus, agaisnt which the overwhleming majority have been vaccinated, im all fucking ears.
 

Stop being so shouty and sweary for God's sake.

Did you miss the bit where I said I wasn't particularly referring to the current football restrictions? Of course, they look daft and contradictory.  Let's not pretend, however, that you and others have just suddenly become riled by the latest developments.  You've been ranting away like this on here for many, many months.

[Bairnardo]

Stop being so shouty and sweary for God's sake.
Did you miss the bit where I said I wasn't particularly referring to the current football restrictions? Of course, they look daft and contradictory.  Let's not pretend, however, that you and others have just suddenly become riled by the latest developments.  You've been ranting away like this on here for many, many months.

Yeah, right enough. How dare I resort to the odd rant on the subject thread of the biggest crisis of my lifetime.

Sorry mate. [emoji20]

Next time you slide in here to call me a Tory il just smile and nod.

[Monkey Tennis]

Just now, Bairnardo said:

 

 

Yeah, right enough. How dare I resort to the odd rant on the subject thread of the biggest crisis of my lifetime.

Sorry mate.

Next time you slide in here to call me a Tory il just smile and nod.

 

I've not once called you a Tory.  I don't imagine you are one. 

Why are you being so silly about this?

[Monkey Tennis]

10 minutes ago, djchapsticks said:

Everyones's standpoint is individualistic and selfish in their own way.

You too will have selfish reasons for your belief structure and point of view. You're deluding yourself if you believe you do not.

Well yes, there will be some bleeding obvious truth in there, so no delusion here I' m afraid.  

I don't think all people are motivated by self interest to identical extents on all issues though.  Do you?

[TheScarf]

It’s fairly ironic that the person calling everyone a Tory is the same person who voted for the right wing policy of leaving the EU and limiting the amount of refugees coming into the UK.

[Detournement]

58 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Not what I'm seeing.

It's legitimate, however, to point out that much of the anti-restriction sentiment expressed on here (not particularly that relating to football) reflects an individualistic, essentially right wing standpoint. 

That fact Is demonstrated in the posturing of those who make up the Tories' own militant tendency.

I'd argue that the real right wing position is breaking social bonds through enforced isolation and demanding that things which were previously social interactions are transferred to digital interactions controlled by oligarchs. 

Sadly the dominant contradiction in society and politics is within the right, there is no competing left wing offer. The split in the right is into two factions with the more powerful one being led by finance and tech who are pushing The Great Reset/Fourth Industrial Revolution with politicians like Obama, Blair, Starmer, Macron and Sturgeon doing the public relations. The other faction is Trump/Brexit who want to maintain or restore late 20th century style relations of production and consumption.

The Trump/Brexit faction is economically better on paper for ordinary people but I reality they will never deliver any of their promises so - in the wise words of Stalin - They Are Both Worse. 

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Detournement

[anotherchance]

56 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Not what I'm seeing.

It's legitimate, however, to point out that much of the anti-restriction sentiment expressed on here (not particularly that relating to football) reflects an individualistic, essentially right wing standpoint. 

That fact Is demonstrated in the posturing of those who make up the Tories' own militant tendency.

Would someone concerned about the employment status of low paid workers, as a result of the impact restrictions, be considered right wing too? 

[Monkey Tennis]

3 minutes ago, anotherchance said:

Would someone concerned about the employment status of low paid workers, as a result of the impact restrictions, be considered right wing too? 

No, which is why I said "much of". 

[Ayrshire Analytica]

1 hour ago, Bairnardo said:

And back to the kids logic for Granny.

Honestly, you are an absolute parody poster these days. Stick to supporting Utd mate, at least theres some credibility in your head in the sand, unwavering backing of your football team. Trying to shoe horn your own political bias into every single conversation and twisting the words of others to try and shame them into silence is fucking pathetic.

Once again, since you are hard of thinking and I might just accept that on boxing day, you're maybe still pished.

Covid response should be data driven. The pandemic now is at a different phase from the blunt force that made up our only credible response pre vaccines.

If there is no data suggesting hospitals are in danger of being overwhelmed, there should be no measures.

Further to that, each measure put in place should at least make sense, be proportionate and have a demonstrable impact.

If you can explain to me how any of that makes me right wing or a Tory, by all means crack on. Please note that "thats what the tories are saying!!!!!" Will not be accepted.

You are the sort of idiot who would call someone a Tory if they agreed with a tory that the sky was blue.

To be fair, he was probably a Labour voter for decades until about 2015. 

Must be difficult to come to terms with being conned politically, not once, but twice.

[lithgierose]

This crowd actually keeping records of the booster. 3 of us had a text today within minutes telling us to book a booster jab. How many boosters we meant to get ffs.

[Thorongil]

23 minutes ago, lithgierose said:

This crowd actually keeping records of the booster. 3 of us had a text today within minutes telling us to book a booster jab. How many boosters we meant to get ffs.

I got a text today as well. I got my booster on the 18th.

[Monkey Tennis]

27 minutes ago, lithgierose said:

This crowd actually keeping records of the booster. 3 of us had a text today within minutes telling us to book a booster jab. How many boosters we meant to get ffs.

It's clearly just a blanket message.  I got one too despite getting the booster about three weeks ago.  I therefore know to ignore the message.  

It's hardly a problem, is it?

[Frankie S]

On 26/12/2021 at 13:42, Monkey Tennis said:

Not what I'm seeing.

It's legitimate, however, to point out that much of the anti-restriction sentiment expressed on here (not particularly that relating to football) reflects an individualistic, essentially right wing standpoint. 

That fact Is demonstrated in the posturing of those who make up the Tories' own militant tendency.

I’m sorry but this is just over-simplistic rubbish. I run four businesses in the nightclubs, live music, events and hospitality sector and I’ve never voted Tory in my life and never will, and I’ve never espoused conservative beliefs (either with a large or small c). My vote traditionally went to Labour, but I’ve mainly voted SNP in the last decade or so, and I voted for Independence, precisely because I envision Scotland’s future as a moderately left-leaning state with a social conscience, ideally reintegrated within the European Union, which I thought (and despite my dissatisfaction with Sturgeon and disillusionment with the quality of those around her, still think) would be hugely preferable to decades of Tory hegemony, Brexit and continuing to be ruled from Westminster. 

It’s incredible how quickly heavy-handed governmental measures that would’ve been formerly regarded as authoritarian and illiberal have been normalised and embraced by the centre left, and there is doubtless an element of schadenfreude involved in some quarters at seeing businesses and entrepreneurs struggle, even if the pandemic has disproportionally crippled small Scottish businesses and disproportionately rewarded the multinationals and the super rich. The death of the high street and the decline of the Scottish arts and entertainment scene has only further lined the tax-avoiding pockets of the likes of Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch and Reed Hastings (Netflix). A welfare state needs to harness the economic power of the young to service the welfare needs of the elderly, and it simply cannot be predicated upon a moribund economy and a demoralised business community.

I don’t run my businesses because I’m a rampant Tory capitalist, and I don’t come from a privileged background (I inherited nothing and built my businesses from scratch). I do it because I’m passionate about music in particular and culture in general. During the first lockdown, I paid all my full-time staff 100% despite furlough being 80% (and lower), and now during this (minimum) three week shutdown for nightclubs with no furlough, I’m still paying my full-time staff 100%, with absolutely no government support, other than the vague promise of Sturgeon’s ‘lucky dip’, an as yet unspecified (and almost certainly insufficient) amount of support to be given to those nightclubs that elect to close rather than repurpose themselves as socially-distanced bars. So far am I from being a right wing fat cat, that for the majority of our working lives, my wife (a hairdresser) has earned more than I have, and indeed our mortgage was secured primarily on the basis of her secure income, as my businesses were regarded as ‘too high risk.’ Only in the four or five years before Covid did my investment of 30+ years in my respective businesses result in my earnings finally exceeding those of my wife. I was never in it for the money tbh, so it never mattered to me that I never made any more than a relatively modest living, even from working 80+ hours a week, 7 days a week. One thing’s for sure though, I know how much tax revenue my businesses have contributed to the economy over the last three decades, and it’s certainly not negligible.

I’ve already said that I think Corporation Tax should be raised in Scotland and the increased tax revenue ring-fenced for investment in our massively under-funded and long-neglected NHS, which was in crisis long before Covid hit. I’m not sure that aligns very well with an ‘individualistic, essentially right wing standpoint’. 

My contention since the start of the pandemic is that younger generations are being disproportionately penalised and stigmatised (the nadir of which was the ‘don’t kill grandpa / granny’ TV ads run by Scot Gov back at the height of the first wave). Ultimately this virus has never really represented a significant threat to the health of the young, yet they’re not only expected to make huge sacrifices to protect the sick and elderly, which the vast majority are happy to do without complaint, their jobs are now regarded as disposable, and their passions and interests (football, live music, clubbing, culture) are the first activities to be restricted by the government, irrespective of the data, vaccination levels or the vaccine passport scheme, that were until recently the key to returning to normality, or the massive amounts these sectors have invested in Covid mitigations.

Not only do hospitality, live music, events and related cultural (theatre, cinema, arts etc.) sectors primarily service the interests and passions of younger generations, they overwhelmingly employ younger people. And in the events, arts and live music sectors particularly there are huge numbers of young freelancers (and self-employed) who barely received any government support during the first lockdown and haven’t even been part of the conversation during this new Scottish mini-lockdown (which effectively extends from nightclubs to live music and arts - almost all concerts, and many theatrical productions, pantomimes etc. have been cancelled due to the pingdemic, or the new social distancing regulations rendering events unviable). I know countless self-employed freelancers who have worked for decades in the music and arts sectors who have had to abandon their careers, often taking menial jobs in less vulnerable sectors due to the lack of government support. Similarly a huge proportion of young people who formerly worked in hospitality (one of the largest employers in the country, particularly of young people) have had to bail out due to the ongoing uncertainly affecting hospitality and the utterly demoralised state of the sector. These sectors are now in existential crisis. They have been consistently marginalised, stigmatised and now vandalised by the government, who at no point have acknowledged their importance to the economy, to mental health or to young people’s social development.

It’s all too easy for the entitled older generation with their comfortable nest eggs, property and pension schemes (built up during the halcyon days before Covid), to demand of the young that they keep them safe, but to erode their job opportunities, and the social and cultural opportunities (that they themselves doubtless enjoyed to the full as young people) by consistently stigmatising and scapegoating these sectors strikes me as fundamentally selfish and indefensible

Protective safety-first measures that prioritised public health over the economy that were perfectly understandable during the pandemic phase of Covid are no longer fit for purpose during the endemic stage, with successively weaker variants encountering a considerably more immune (both by vaccination and natural infection) population. The mountain of accumulated debt already incurred by putting everything on hold for the best part of two years will need to be paid off, and most of us in business acknowledge that a more onerous tax regime is an inevitable part of that, and the only way to achieve this is by re-energising the economy, not by continuing to panic and close it down every time a new variant rears its head and the media slips back into scaremongering mode.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Frankie S

[Monkey Tennis]

16 minutes ago, Frankie S said:

I’m sorry but this is just over-simplistic rubbish. I run four businesses in the nightclubs, live music, events and hospitality sector and I’ve never voted Tory in my life and never will, and I’ve never espoused conservative beliefs (either with a large or small c). My vote traditionally went to Labour, but I’ve mainly voted SNP in the last decade or so, and I voted for Independence, precisely because I envision Scotland’s future as a moderately left-leaning state with a social conscience, ideally reintegrated within the European Community, which I thought (and despite my dissatisfaction with Sturgeon and disillusionment with the quality of those around her, still think) would be hugely preferable to decades of Tory hegemony, Brexit and continuing to be ruled from Westminster. 

It’s incredible how quickly heavy-handed governmental measures that would’ve been formerly regarded as authoritarian and illiberal have been normalised and embraced by the centre left, and there is doubtless an element of schadenfreude involved in some quarters at seeing businesses and entrepreneurs struggle, even if the pandemic has disproportionally crippled small Scottish businesses and disproportionately rewarded the multinationals and the super rich. The death of the high street and the decline of the Scottish arts and entertainment scene has only further lined the tax-avoiding pockets of the likes of Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch and Reed Hastings (Netflix). A welfare state needs to harness the economic power of the young to service the welfare needs of the elderly, and it simply cannot be predicated upon a moribund economy and a demoralised business community.

I don’t run my businesses because I’m a rampant Tory capitalist, and I don’t come from a privileged background (I inherited nothing and built my businesses from scratch). I do it because I’m passionate about music in particular and culture in general. During the first lockdown, I paid all my full-time staff 100% despite furlough being 80% (and lower), and now during this (minimum) three week shutdown for nightclubs with no furlough, I’m still paying my full-time staff 100%, with absolutely no government support, other than the vague promise of Sturgeon’s ‘lucky dip’, an as yet unspecified (and almost certainly insufficient) amount of support to be given to those nightclubs that elect to close rather than repurpose themselves as socially-distanced bars. So far am I from being a right wing fat cat, that for the majority of our working lives, my wife (a hairdresser) has earned more than I have, and indeed our mortgage was secured primarily on the basis of her secure income, as my businesses were regarded as ‘too high risk.’ Only in the four or five years before Covid did my investment of 30+ years in my respective businesses result in my earnings finally exceeding those of my wife. I was never in it for the money tbh, so it never mattered to me that I never made any more than a relatively modest living, even from working 80+ hours a week, 7 days a week. One thing’s for sure though, I know how much tax revenue my businesses have contributed to the economy over the last three decades, and it’s certainly not negligible.

I’ve already said that I think Corporation Tax should be raised in Scotland and the increased tax revenue ring-fenced for investment in our massively under-funded and long-neglected NHS, which was in crisis long before Covid hit. I’m not sure that aligns very well with an ‘individualistic, essentially right wing standpoint’. 

My contention since the start of the pandemic is that younger generations are being disproportionately penalised and stigmatised (the nadir of which was the ‘don’t kill grandpa / granny’ TV ads run by Scot Gov back at the height of the first wave). Ultimately this virus has never really represented a significant threat to the health of the young, yet they’re not only expected to make huge sacrifices to protect the sick and elderly, which the vast majority are happy to do without complaint, their jobs are now regarded as disposable, and their passions and interests (football, live music, clubbing, culture) are the first activities to be restricted by the government, irrespective of the data, vaccination levels or the vaccine passport scheme, that were until recently the key to returning to normality, or the massive amounts these sectors have invested in Covid mitigations.

Not only do hospitality, live music, events and related cultural (theatre, cinema, arts etc.) sectors primarily service the interests and passions of younger generations, they overwhelmingly employ younger people. And in the events, arts and live music sectors particularly there are huge numbers of young freelancers (and self-employed) who barely received any government support during the first lockdown and haven’t even been part of the conversation during this new Scottish mini-lockdown (which effectively extends from nightclubs to live music and arts - almost all concerts, and many theatrical productions, pantomimes etc. have been cancelled due to the pingdemic, or the new social distancing regulations rendering events unviable). I know countless self-employed freelancers who have worked for decades in the music and arts sectors who have had to abandon their careers, often taking menial jobs in less vulnerable sectors due to the lack of government support. Similarly a huge proportion of young people who formerly worked in hospitality (one of the largest employers in the country, particularly of young people) have had to bail out due to the ongoing uncertainly affecting hospitality and the utterly demoralised state of the sector. These sectors are now in existential crisis. They have been consistently marginalised, stigmatised and now vandalised by the government, who at no point have acknowledged their importance to the economy, to mental health or to young people’s social development.

It’s all too easy for the entitled older generation with their comfortable nest eggs and pension schemes (built up during the halcyon days before Covid), to demand of the young that they keep them safe, but to erode their job opportunities, and the social and cultural opportunities (that they themselves doubtless enjoyed to the full as young people) by consistently stigmatising and scapegoating these sectors strikes me as fundamentally selfish and indefensible

Protective safety-first measures that prioritised public health over the economy that were perfectly understandable during the pandemic phase of Covid are no longer fit for purpose during the endemic stage, with successively weaker variants encountering a considerably more immune (both by vaccination and natural infection) population. The mountain of accumulated debt already incurred by putting everything on hold for the best part of two years will need to be paid off, and most of us in business acknowledge that a more onerous tax regime is an inevitable part of that, and the only way to achieve this is by re-energising the economy, not by continuing to panic and close it down every time a new variant rears its head and the media slips back into scaremongering mode.

Gosh.

I'd agree with much of that, but I'm really struggling to see how any of it renders my post "over-simplistic rubbish".  

Care to explain that bit?