Petty Things That Get On Your Nerves...

[TxRover]

Uh oh, VT’s had to leave another thread, and settled here to fulfill his need to be contrary. Just joining threads to be a miserable c**t since 2007.

[Hillonearth]

19 minutes ago, coprolite said:

On the flip side, the cafes and coffee shops in the outlying business district near my house are thriving. There are more independents here although the big chains are represented, but it’s not a desert with only Starbucks and Pret like most city centres. I expect the council’s issue is the lower rates outside the centre.

That's exactly what I was meaning in terms of agility - a gradual move out of the city centre proper and closer to where people actually live.

Conversely, if you run a sandwich shop that previously had a captive audience of a couple of big city centre businesses or a pub dependent on the post-work office crowd and have been doggedly sitting it out for more than two years waiting for people to come back, you might as well put out the lights now.

[VincentGuerin]

I live in a small town from which a lot of people (used to?) commute to the nearby larger towns and cities. I've barely been in my office since March 2020, and I'll be fucked if I'm going to start commuting again and spending all the time, energy, and money that entails just because some manager 'likes to see people's faces'. I think it would genuinely be a resigning issue for me now, as there are so many jobs you can have now and work from home. Fortunately, our boss isn't a massive choob, so that's not going to happen.

What is noticeable is that our wee town now has two more cafes than it had before, one more restaurant, and a brand new pub. I very much doubt this is in no way a result of the locals having more money and time to spend. We need more pandemics to improve our small towns, imo.

[scottsdad]

One of the (few) positives to come from the pandemic is a greater awareness of mental health. Added to that, it altered over the course of the last 3 years.

People were literally scared silly during the pandemic. They saw others not as people and human beings but as plague carriers. We were not helped at all by scientists of various flavours all offering differing viewpoints and acting like celebrities as a result. Some wallowed in having a "following" for the first time. Add to that government ministers giving mixed messages, trying to virtue signal by locking down when it wasn't needed. Over and over again, people's mental health was under assault. Is it any wonder people haven't gone straight back to work the minute the all-clear was given?

One colleague of mine I saw teaching whilst wearing two masks. This was 3 weeks ago. I had seen him in corridors like this and thought, fair enough, his choice. But to see him trying to muffle his way through a lecture, whilst every student in the room was unmasked (and apparently checking their phones). Here is one guy who is not comfortable around other people, post-pandemic.

It isn't about convenience, like VT suggests. For some, their world view has changed. For others, the (genuine) question can be asked: do I need to go back to working in the old way, when the new one does just fine?

The new world order is a mix. Some folk are back full time - some never stopped - some are WFH full time. Some are a mixture. For me, I am in three days a week. If I was at home full time, I wouldn't have the chance to corner a colleague in the corridor and bore them half to death with my inane drivel. That kind of interaction has to be done in person, and is a day well spent. I'd be in more but petrol costs too much.

[TxRover]

1 hour ago, VincentGuerin said:

I live in a small town from which a lot of people (used to?) commute to the nearby larger towns and cities. I've barely been in my office since March 2020, and I'll be fucked if I'm going to start commuting again and spending all the time, energy, and money that entails just because some manager 'likes to see people's faces'. I think it would genuinely be a resigning issue for me now, as there are so many jobs you can have now and work from home. Fortunately, our boss isn't a massive choob, so that's not going to happen.

What is noticeable is that our wee town now has two more cafes than it had before, one more restaurant, and a brand new pub. I very much doubt this is in no way a result of the locals having more money and time to spend. We need more pandemics to improve our small towns, imo.

The most prevalent obstacle to continuing to work remotely continues to be managers that can’t wrap their heads around the fact that all their subordinates are not greedily, self-serving little weasel like themselves who will avoid working if not being micro-managed. While wrapping up my career at the tail of the pandemic shutdown, I was talking to a coworker who was being badgered by their manager because their “productivity”, per a monitoring program, was low. The stupid program was looking for mouse movements to assess “productivity”, and the manager didn’t understand both how that worked and that his job involved a good bit of offline listening to tapes of conversations, reading of materials, regulations and reports and then inputing those results into a report online. He was working his ass off and being told he wasn’t working…and was near quitting until I introduced him to a mouse jiggler.

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

3 hours ago, sophia said:

Allan "Hendo" Henderson.

Seems to be one of these mouth on a stick go to guys for BBC Radio Scotland

 

 

[vikingTON]

20 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

It isn't about convenience, like VT suggests. For some, their world view has changed. For others, the (genuine) question can be asked: do I need to go back to working in the old way, when the new one does just fine?

1) The number of people who are still wearing masks and taking other, nonsense 'protective measures' because their head has been sent wobbling by the pandemic is now a vanishingly small minority. And almost none of those actually stick to their safety theatre the moment that it doesn't suit them to do so - which makes it pointless to accommodate their nonsense any more. Society has moved on and is right to do so. 

2) That 'genuine question' is still one of convenience though. It is absolutely not one  a legitimate mental health issue being created by an employer (or any other institution) having the temerity to establish basic standards of behaviour. 

This is the unfortunate and unintended consequence of the raised awareness of mental health issues over the past few years. We are also enabling a lot of people to pass off bog-standard lazy behaviour or a failure to organise their lives as a Mental Health Issue. In the expectancy that this will earn them an unlimited number of free passes, because that is the incentive structure set out by the current culture. You work in a university and so will be experiencing this on a near daily basis. 

I don't know who we strike the correct balance between encouraging transparency and support for genuine issues without having chancers taking the piss, but we are not doing a very good job of differentiating between the two right now.  

[scottsdad]

The way the BBC news website breaks Scotland into pieces. "Tayside and Central" - lumping civilisation like Falkirk in with the outer reaches of places like Forfar makes no sense.

[Hedgecutter]

49 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

The way the BBC news website breaks Scotland into pieces. "Tayside and Central" - lumping civilisation like Falkirk in with the outer reaches of places like Forfar makes no sense.

... that and having a "Highlands and Islands" section that doesn't include Orkney / Shetland. 

(the University of the Highlands and Islands has campuses in both Orkney and Shetland, as just one example)

[GordonD]

1 hour ago, scottsdad said:

The way the BBC news website breaks Scotland into pieces. "Tayside and Central" - lumping civilisation like Falkirk in with the outer reaches of places like Forfar makes no sense.

Lucky they don't split Scotland into 'Glasgow' and 'Here be monsters'.

[Newbornbairn]

Talking of city centres, I was shown a project recently to put "pods" into some of those retail spaces left empty by the likes of Debenhams. A bit like fancy portacabins, they're done out as offices, study rooms etc with superfast broadband. The idea is to create 20 minute communities, where no-one has to commute more than 20 minutes and revitalise big shopping centres where the larger retailers are just never coming back. 

[Dan Steele]

2 hours ago, scottsdad said:

The way the BBC news website breaks Scotland into pieces. "Tayside and Central" - lumping civilisation like Falkirk in with the outer reaches of places like Forfar makes no sense.

[Raidernation]

On 09/12/2022 at 02:07, GordonD said:

Only about 15% of the population is left-handed, so how has my family managed to keep this uncommon trait? 

Inbreeding.

I have noticed in AA, outpatient and residential treatment for addiction there's a significantly higher percentage of left handers, las residential I worked it out as an average of about 35-40%. Wonder if there's a connection.........

[invergowrie arab]

28 minutes ago, Newbornbairn said:

Talking of city centres, I was shown a project recently to put "pods" into some of those retail spaces left empty by the likes of Debenhams. A bit like fancy portacabins, they're done out as offices, study rooms etc with superfast broadband. The idea is to create 20 minute communities, where no-one has to commute more than 20 minutes and revitalise big shopping centres where the larger retailers are just never coming back. 

How would that help given the vast majority of people don't live within 20 minutes of the city centre and that superfluous city centre office space is one of the problems?

[Newbornbairn]

12 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

How would that help given the vast majority of people don't live within 20 minutes of the city centre and that superfluous city centre office space is one of the problems?

70% of the population live in the central belt and every town has a problem with bg empty retail spaces.  They won't just be for office space, they'll be used as student study pods, pop-up craft centres etc. 

[Sergeant Wilson]

I'd say the biggest problem in Glasgow city centre, is not enough people live there. Workers will come and go, albeit in smaller numbers. But if more people lived there shops and pubs etc would be busy with residents. An effort to have affordable housing replacing redundant commercial space might solve the over and under provision of each type of property.

[Hillonearth]

3 minutes ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

I'd say the biggest problem in Glasgow city centre, is not enough people live there. Workers will come and go, albeit in smaller numbers. But if more people lived there shops and pubs etc would be busy with residents. An effort to have affordable housing replacing redundant commercial space might solve the over and under provision of each type of property.

Yeah, aside from those few developments of flats in Tradeston, the Broomielaw and a couple of bits of the Merchant City it's pretty much empty...you need to get to maybe Anderston or Townhead before you find actual residential areas. Given the scarcity of housing it must be worth a punt for a housing association to take over some of those old shops and convert them into flats....probably not in Sauchiehall St though when you consider how flammable that whole street seems to be.

Down the line I don't think there's much future for city centres...the 5 days a week in the office thing is never coming back, and people seem to prefer to either shop online or go to retail parks rather than trail round the town.

Folk maybe have a vague hankering for the city centre shops to remain open as long as THEY don't have to go there - I'm not sure if there's a similar fetishisation of "the high street" here that they seem to have such a boner for in England....that 1950s Ladybird book vision of a street of cutesy butchers, bakers and candlestick makers....you'll maybe see rows of shops like that in small affluent places like say Giffnock or Bearsden, but I don't think it's ever been the reality of our town centres.

 

[vikingTON]

3 hours ago, scottsdad said:

The way the BBC news website breaks Scotland into pieces. "Tayside and Central" - lumping civilisation like Falkirk in with the outer reaches of places like Forfar makes no sense.

Both are seaside league diddy outposts so it sounds about right to me. 

Edited December 12, 2022 by vikingTON

[Cosmic Joe]

3 hours ago, virginton said:

Both are seaside league diddy outposts so it sounds about right to me. 

virginton playing virginton bingo again

[Bigmouth Strikes Again]

14 hours ago, Newbornbairn said:

70% of the population live in the central belt and every town has a problem with bg empty retail spaces.  They won't just be for office space, they'll be used as student study pods, pop-up craft centres etc. 

All part of Schwabs New World Order plan, everybody will be living in these 'pods'.

You will own f**k all and be happy.

Thank you.