Caring - Hardest Game In The World

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by Clive_ofthe_Kremlin, Apr 17, 2020.

  1. zztop

    zztop Eurovision Winner 2015

    More to the point, have you been vaccinated yet?
     
  2. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider


    Agreed, you should be supplied with week's worth of the uniform. I don't think you can really moan about having to wear your own trousers and shoes though! The other question is whether your uniform will be visible to the clients under all of your PPE anyway?
     
  3. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    Clive, I have to ask, why do you continue to work for less than minimum pay in horrific conditions for a **** of a company? There are better jobs out there that you could walk into.
     
  4. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    6 but I bought myself 3 more off ebay (plain yellow polo) because even 6 isn't really enough.
     
  5. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    I work in care in general because it is a noble calling and meets with my moral standards. Too often I felt like I was 'working for the wrong side' in previous jobs.

    As for this company, I am seriously considering a swap. They are hopelessly inept and there aren't many worse. I'm quite tempted by working in a home - at least then my car doesn't get worn out and I get paid for a straightforward shift worked. I remain in the hopes of unionising the place (at last some interest in that from the comrade carers) and of helping the union against Sodexo.

    I have been chosen as one of four carers nationwide to give evidence to the government's Low Pay Commission next month for example. You can be sure I will not hold back.....
     
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  6. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    No. But so what. All the clients are vaccinated anyway. And the evidence that you're less transmissible after the vaccine is sketchy to say the least. I reckon I'm reasonably fit, I'm in the green for BMI, we take vitamin D supplements all the time. I'm most unlikely to die from it. And above all, I cannot afford to have time off unpaid sick.
     
  7. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    I imagine the rebranding is required because of all these nasty posts on social media about their company. They are getting a bad name and need to distance themselves. I'm hearing, from the man at ESSO, that the rebranding includes a name change to "weloveoldpeopleandallournoncubanstaff.com"
     
  8. WillisWasTheWorst

    WillisWasTheWorst Its making less grammar mistake's thats important

    I don't get what anyone who thinks rationally about vaccines thinks they have to lose by having one. And what about all the people you come into contact with who are not vaccinated clients? Good luck with the protection you get from vitamin D.
     
  9. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    What?! If you want me to wear a particular thing, then you bloody buy it. After all, you're the multimillion pound International conglomerate and I'm a minimum wage carer.

    As it goes, they ask for black trousers and shoes which are commonplace, but suppose they wanted me to wear purple trousers with 'Gradgrind's for Care' embroidered in pistachio across the arse - would I have the right to moan then if I had to buy 'em myself? What about if they were exclusively available from the dear employer and priced at £64.99 a pair plus delivery? OK to moan?

    Would the Watford players be OK to moan if they were told the club would supply a single home and away shirt, but any further must be purchased and they must supply their own shorts and socks?

    At the very, very least, they ought to allow us tax relief on the cost of buying the particular uniform shoes and trousers required each year. We get though loads of them - I've even accidentally knelt in bathroom floor shitt before now and had big brown 'tie dye' effects on both knees. Well I couldn't expect Ciff to wash them, so they went in the bin.
     
  10. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    I'm honestly surprised that a dyed in the wool socialist like yourself isn't getting vaccinated, Clive.

    Vaccination is very much a social program. We all "pay" into it through being vaccinated so that those who can't get vaccinated (as there is always a percentage who cannot be) are also protected. After herd immunity is achieved, transmission rates plummet and all are protected, including those who cannot receive the vaccine.

    The unfortunate reality is that people who refuse to get vaccinated don't just put themselves at risk, they put others at risk too.
     
  11. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    Turn up naked and see if you get free clothes then.
    Branded uniform yes, but can't say I've ever had the required suit, shirt or tie bought for me.
     
  12. zztop

    zztop Eurovision Winner 2015

    Why would you need to have time work off if you are vaccinated?

    You are just being selfish.
     
  13. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    He thinks there are side effects which will knock him out for a couple of days.
     
  14. inayellowshirt

    inayellowshirt From the other place

    Sometimes I question myself, my job and whether I qualify for the role.. Then I read things like this and remember there are people up above me who just do not have a clue.
     
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  15. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    I see the second largest care home provider in the U.K. has now stated, as I suspected would happen, that care workers will stop being offered shifts unless they are inoculated.
     
  16. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Apparently care recipients are expressing a preference for carers who've had the vaccine.
     
  17. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

  18. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Definitely seemed on the cards, yes. And sensible too.
     
  19. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Interview is today,

    I will report back.
     
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  20. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    Go get 'em, Tiger
     
  21. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Very sympathetic they were. Very understanding. Quite outraged at times. I told them the story of the Xmas gift plastic disc with a poem on it and one of the other carers showed a bobble hat with the company logo on it that she had been given by her grateful employers.

    In London it seems they're hiring any warm body to do care in the homes. All the hotel workers who are out of work at the moment are doing it, administering meds, hoisting and all sorts. That's according to the comrade working up there.

    Well I suppose they'll produce their report in 6 months time or whatever and it'll make a little news story of "Low Pay Commission Says Carers Treated Appallingly" and a government spokesperson responds that no, in fact they're spending more money on care than ever before and everything is fine. And that'll be the end of that until next year.
     
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  22. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Dunno @Clive_ofthe_Kremlin. Someone 'must' be looking at the demographic crisis (cf Japan) we're staggering, zombie-like, towards. Especially since the 'quick-fix' of EU immigration has gone.

    FWIW: some throwaway line I heard on R4 yesterday "...the British population hasn't been able to replenish itself since the 1970's..."
     
  23. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Ropey schedule this morning.

    First call - 08:00-08:30 and it's 10.5 miles away and 22 mins drive according to AA route planner.

    As it's the first call of the day, I don't get paid mileage to go there, so it's at my own time and petr0l expense.

    My next one after that isn't until 10:00, so I shall probably come back home for an hour or so. The rub is, that where there's a break of more than an hour, you're treated as starting again and so mileage to my second call is also unpaid. As is the mileage back from the first visit. The second one is 5.3 miles (12 mins) away from home.

    So when I arrive at my second visit, I will have been driving for 56 mins (assuming the roads are clear), I will have covered 26.3 miles in my own car on company business and will have attended to a client for 30 mins. I will be about 2.5 hours into my working day and will have earned precisely £5.22.

    Fortunately both calls are great. Sweet old lady in a big house with little to do except meds on the first one. Ex-airline pilot for Britannia Airways (now sadly with mild dementia) for the second. I'm planning to take him for a walk in the bluebell woods today....
     
    Moose likes this.
  24. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Didn't make the woods. His wife wanted him to have a haircut and he definitely has got a bit of a shaggy sheepdog look about him these days. Tried 4 barbers - 2 with appointment only and 2 with queues along the street. It's a shame we're prevented by the rules from them meeting our families, otherwise Cifriana could have sat him on our kitchen chair with a teatowel round his neck and given him the Cuban crop, which all us male Kremlins universally sport these days. She only knows one cut.

    Instead we sat outside the Portuguese cafe and had a cappuccino and a pastel de nata each. He was very taken with the pastel, which was a new experience for him. He told me plenty of hair-raising stories from his 747 airline piloting days, which included lines like "....and of course the passengers were none the wiser. We just told 'em we'd had to turn back because of a technical problem ". Eek!
     
  25. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Welcome new Afghani comrades!

    https://www.homecareinsight.co.uk/home-care-provider-pledges-to-recruit-500-afghan-refugees/

    When seeing people clinging to the side of jets and handing their babies over walls to US soldiers, our care bosses think to themselves, 'hmmmm, maybe they're even desperate enough to work in care'. Opportunity knocks! They'll go straight from exchanging mortarfire with insurgents, or translating for senior military officials to wiping bum and creaming legs.

    “Over the next five years, our goal is to exploit them in this journey by offering a pathway into not only precarious employment, but an enormously rewarding career (cough) in one of the UK’s most important, but undervalued and underpaid sectors. We’ll be working with those councils we are already in partnership with, as well as the government more broadly, to reach out to those affected and who seem ripe for exploitation.”

    He continued: “If we can play even a small role in exploiting those arriving from Afghanistan, that’s an opportunity we’re keen to grasp with both hands. We’ve been greatly inspired by the response from across the international business community, and are keen to exploit wherever we can.”
     
  26. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    So the great Tory plan for care sails into view across the horizon. All is not very clear, but they're seeing how much outrage is generated by the idea of an NI increase by 2%. Quite a lot amongst horrified Tories and rich people, even though it will hit working people and the poorest much harder proportionately than say, an income tax rise.

    Nevertheless, tax rises are against the manifesto! Tories are appalled. They say such a tax rise would be "cruel" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...t-burden-young-hiking-National-Insurance.html

    What will be done with the money raised? Well first of all they say, it'll be used to reduce the backlog in the NHS. Doubtlessly this will be done as current through the lavish employment on very juicy contracts of private health companies. Triple dividends all round!

    If there is any left over "in later years" then it will be used for care. The principle aim is to ensure that rich people don't have to sell the house they no longer need to fund their care in a home and that the children receive their inheritance in full.

    As the DM article writer briefly notes, he's experienced care at home recently and appreciates the poorly-paid plight of the carer, for whom he has "nothing but the highest praise".

    And that, comrades, is precisely what carers will receive from Mr Johnson's new care deal. Nothing but praise. Clap, clap, clap! Marvellous! So selfless!
     
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  27. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    It’s a ‘solution’ that befits the man and his capacity to concentrate. And the plan to divert funds in the short term to the NHS is just a joke. The care system is completely broken in this country and needs top to bottom reform but the best the government can come up with is jam tomorrow.
     
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  28. I've been trying to fathom out what the governments plan actually is, it's very short on detail.

    As far as I can tell, it's to tax everyone a bit more so that old folks can keep more of their money and bequeath more in their will.

    Now I am all for fixing social care - we have elderly relatives in our family one who was recently in a home before passing with covid, and another who gets a care visitor - and have experienced the state of social care first hand, but taking with one hand and giving back with the other isn't going to cut it.

    The problem isn't how much cash old folks get to keep, in fact I would say it's been way easier to get all the support needed with the one relative who hasn't a pot to pi55 in than it has been for those with pensions and houses.

    As for the backlog in the NHS, they burned through ~£200B last year, no amount of extra money is going to fix it. All that will happen is the NHS will push backlog patients through private healthcare on the taxpayer, and the only one getting rich will be the private healthcare companies.

    Buy private healthcare shares is my tip.

    We need a grown up conversation in this country about healthcare; unfortunately it's a taboo subject, with all parties continually trying to out do themselves on who can be more NHS.
     
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  29. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    @Clive_ofthe_Kremlin are you familiar with the 'Care Home Owner' and 'Carer Service Provider' who keeps popping up (three times in the past fortnight) on R4 to exclaim that the 'requirement' of compulsory C19 jabs is going to force her to close care homes and deny the most vulnerable members of society access to the 'service' 'she' now 'provides'?
     
  30. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    I've seen a fair few of them saying the same thing. We already had 120k vacancies in care before the pandemic. God knows how many there are now. I saw an estimate of 170k. They say somewhere around 10-15% of carers haven't had their jab and it's unknown how many feel strongly enough about it to leave rather than have it. Even amongst us that have had it, there's a severe feeling of pished offness that we're again the ones getting picked on. NHS staff are merely 'encouraged' to have their vaccine whereas we're to be held down and have a needle stuck in us.

    Now they're talking about also making annual flu jabs compulsory for carers. That would be the final straw for quite a few more carers I think. Up until when? Until what point do we put up with it? £8.72 per hour wiping backside, administering meds, washing, cooking, cleaning and all the rest, or £13.50 per hour at Amazon putting stuff in boxes?
     
  31. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Hello - the 21st century is calling.
     
  32. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Well I'm not making a case against the vaccine - I've had mine.

    All I'm trying to point out is that there is a current dearth of carers and this is going to be another straw on the camel's back. If they decide to add the annual flu jab, then that's another. Whether it's the one that breaks it completely, we will see.

    Carers are voting with their feet and everything that comes is just making things worse. Their attention to the problem of recruitment appears cursory at best. How much for example was spent with advertising men with red framed spectacles and white rimmed nostrils, TV executives, actors etc to make that dreadful series of recent TV and radio ads attempting to recruit carers? How many millions? How many more billions will be spent on ensuring Clarabel and Henry get the full inheritance from the sale of ALL their parents' properties rather than it being 'wasted' on beastly care?

    Spend it instead on carers' pay and conditions, make it a respected and attractive job in healthcare, with proper training, career progression, proper managers who vaguely know what they're doing. You'd get recruits flooding in then. The offices would be buried in a landslide of CVs. The young people would be doing apprenticeships in it. It all seems so obvious.

    But you can't really do that with private companies involved. All trying to out compete each other and skin a halfpenny wherever they can (invariably on carers' pay, conditions and training as first port of call) in order to increase profits year on year and pay larger dividends and director's remuneration and/or undercut the competitor's prices.

    And since all the major UK political parties are against nationalisation and strongly in favour of privatisation and 'free enterprise', care for the disabled and elderly in this country will continue to be viewed as a profit-making opportunity and a 'business'.

    As a very good sign I saw at yesterday's care workers national demo;

    Privatised.
    Atomised.
    Carers Leaving?
    Not Surprised!
     
  33. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    I finally caught the lady in question's name yesterday: Ricki Bibi. She seems a very odd choice to be a spokesperson for 'vaccine hesitant' workers in the care industry: https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2020...e-has-lost-60-of-its-residents-to-coronavirus.
     
  34. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Yes, unfortunately another aspect of the privatisation of care is that all sorts of 'characters' get involved in it as managers and directors of these little private care companies. It's obviously quite precarious and unstable with the bad ones, because you never know what whims and fancies are going to pass through their brain to do today. Often they're hopelessly inept and cut all sorts of corners depending on 'cash flow' and so on. Recruitment is also obviously in their hands and especially with it being as bad as it is now, we also get quite a few 'characters' who turn up as prospective carers too - although they rarely last long.

    Although I'm sorry for Ricki Bibi's (crazy name, crazy lady) predicament, it actually might be quite a good thing if loads of private care companies start going bust. Then they'll be more or less forced into nationalisation.

    I notice also that in the very, very last words of the long piece describing her anguish over her personal loans and financial situation Ricki Ticki Tavi suddenly remembers and "applauds" her carers. She says they have "selfless commitment". Oh yes. So, so, selfless. Clap, clap, clap.
     
  35. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Speaking of applauding carers, did you ever get your pin badge from Hancock @Clive_ofthe_Kremlin?
     

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