Covid-19 Virus

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by Hornet4ever, Jan 30, 2020.

  1. HappyHornet24

    HappyHornet24 Crapster Staff Member

    Do you know where you/your daughter is likely to have picked it up? Hope you all get well soon.
     
  2. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    She must have got it from a singing/dancing/acting club they did at Ricky school last week.

    There weren't a huge number of kids there, but it's the only place I can think of.
     
  3. The Whoosh Magnet

    The Whoosh Magnet Academy Graduate

    How are your other logins coping?
     
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  4. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    *Prof Andrew Hammett first words in the course in "Higher mathematics for Physical Scientists" 1992, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne.
     
  5. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Is that both a place and a euphemism?

    Get well soon moogy.
     
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  6. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

  7. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Well, as I did it, the guys shouted 'You're supposed to put it up your nose!'
     
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  8. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Don’t let it ruin your cheery disposition on everything Watford :).
    Seriously, hope you’re all better soon.
    No winding us all up by not posting for a month or so.
     
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2021
  9. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    hop4lee not end up wig da angles and da harambe m8 RIP
     
  10. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Go to jail, presumably.
     
  11. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    The big return to the office yesterday. I’m back a couple of days a week as we test out a hybrid model. The morning commute was pretty good, well a joy compared to pre-pandemic. It looks as if Monday isn’t a day of choice for many returning PT to the office.

    However, by the time I left, early, the Tube was busy and very hot. I felt knackered by the time I reached home. It seemed like a pointless journey. I’d done a bit more face to face with my team, but largely we’d done what we did at home.

    On the tube it was about 70/30 in favour of mask wearing. Most of those not wearing masks were men under 40. Today promises to be busier. Cases of delta will rise.

    There are many calls to get workers back full time ASAP. I think this would be a great shame. There is a chance like never before to revolutionise London and other cities. To shrink office space and increase living space, especially for the young. To turn this down for the short term future of sandwich bars and wine bars seems misguided. Surely if more people could afford to live in the centre of London they too would spend?
     
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  12. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    Apparently yesterday was the busiest day on the tube since March 2020, 800,000 taps before 9am I think they said.

    Seems like we’re being softened up for a ‘firebreak’ in October this morning as well.
     
  13. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    I had to commute in today. An hour to do 14 miles. An hour wasted, absolutely wasted so that my pathetic bosses can see people sitting there. Shameful.
     
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  14. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    I hope the model is forever broken by this, that five days in the office is a thing of the past. For a start it would make the lives of those who have to commute, shop workers, health workers, cleaners etc much easier to have less crowded trains or emptier roads. Often the hour commute ends up being so much longer.
     
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  15. nornironhorn

    nornironhorn Administrator Staff Member

    I had went to the office a couple of times over the summer but today was my first day back with schools/unis back as well.

    Wasted an hour of my morning sitting in traffic and I'll do the same job in the office today than I would have done at home. Will lose an hour driving home later too.
     
  16. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    The paper of record reports on a possible October lockdown:

    https://www.borehamwoodtimes.co.uk/...lans-drawn-up-government---list-restrictions/

    One of our resident intellectuals weighs in with a well-thought-out comment:

     
  17. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    I hope things do change, but I’m assuming (don’t know for a fact) the majority of London office blocks and associated and ongoing developments are owned/funded by big PE, with a significant overlap as far as Tory donors are concerned, so I won’t be holding my breath.
     
  18. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    I have been working from home for 15 years, unlike my friends I have seen my children grow up, I'm not stressed by the commute and pretty much every day the whole family eat dinner together.

    The upshot is that my carbon footprint over the last 15 years would have been much higher if I had been going to an office every day and that I would have had to resort to having two cars (my wife and I manage with one) and likely that we would have had to drive the children to school instead of walking them, although my 15-y-o cycles now.


    The unused (or underused) offices and brownfield sites could then be converted into residential spaces going forward, this is our chance to cut down on unnecessary waste of fossil fuels and more importantly, time. On a work day during school holidays I can crawl out of bed at 8:45 if I wanted to.
     
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  19. WillisWasTheWorst

    WillisWasTheWorst Its making less grammar mistake's thats important

  20. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    3 likes as well.

    :rolleyes:

    A lock down is predictable.

    If people follow it is a different matter !
     
  21. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

  22. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

  23. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Agree with you. The trend has always been for populations to cram more and more tightly into the cities where the offices are. How about people can live more spread out, office space can be repurposed and we can change the way we all live for the better.

    Less unneccesary time spent travelling on packed trains, less pollution generated by cars as travel is reduced.

    I would say the losses to commercial landlords and city centre eateries are more than balanced by the benefits to everyone else.

    I will be standing firm against anything more than a day or 2 into the office now. I simply don't need to be there more than that.
     
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  24. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    I am moog.
     
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  25. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    I know it’s not necessarily sustainable, but I have also actually taken the train far more for leisure purposes, and enjoyed it due to them being at most half full most of the time. I’ve been able to take my dogs on there with no stress and have used my car far less as a result.

    As I say, it’s not necessarily sustainable going forward, but then again when I used to commute into London I was mostly wedged into a corridor or in the area by the toilet because it was already full even before 7am. That in itself shouldn’t need to be the case.
     
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  26. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    I have a week holiday in Crete from 18th Oct so I've asked Boris to look at November instead.
     
  27. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    Boris worried about the numbers unvaccinated in hospital.

    Guess these are younger people who haven’t had the chance to have the vaccine or those who simple don’t want it.

    Can much be done to help the latter ?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58494842
     
  28. nornironhorn

    nornironhorn Administrator Staff Member

    Surely everyone has no had the chance to have it? Or do you mean under 16s?
     
  29. Robert Peel

    Robert Peel Squad Player

    My employer was taken over by a Dutch company last year, run by and overly hands-on ego-maniac CEO. Him and his team have decided that when we go back, 3 days in the office will be mandatory. When pushed at Q&A sessions, they have no real data or reason to back up why 3 days. Those in the various European offices are quite pleased as working from home wasn't a thing before Covid. The UK and Canada are furious and the you can tell that the UK senior management don't believe in the policy they are being forced to back.

    2 days I can understand, but 3 is simply forcing presenteeism. There is nothing to suggest that people will get more face to face time if its 3 days rather than 2. People are leaving in big numbers and citing the policy as the main reason, but the ownership are too arrogant to listen.
     
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  30. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    It's idiocy and clearly indicative of a controlling boss with issues. Many companies have operated as well, or better for the past 2 years (especially in tech, where I work).

    Some companies have embraced this and cut office costs as an unneccesary burden, but others are pushing for people being in the office, purely to enforce their will on their teams.

    I work in employee analytics tech, so this is something we help companies with (eg. Return to work surveys) and it's interesting how progressive companies differ from old school, dinosaur organisations. Banks and financial services seem to be the worst, but they often have the most expensive leases to justify too.
     
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  31. Yes, make it difficult for them to live their normal lives by the use of vaccine passports. Then see how their belief in 5G/Bill Gates/microchip/DNA change conspiracy theories or the underlying fear of needles that underpins a lot of this nonsense stand up to real "hardship". Or will they be like brexiteers and see reports of untreated sewage being put into rivers because of shortages of treatment chemicals and say "well we didn't have clean water in the war". "Well, we never went to the pub/cinema/football in the war"...


    Incidentally, it would appear that a venn diagram of antivaxxers and brexiteers is a circle within a circle.
     
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  32. Robert Peel

    Robert Peel Squad Player

    The company run a massive, well known app, so a lot of the work is software development (not my area, but that's a lot of the head office staff) - developers are an introverted bunch, a lot of whom come in work and go home with little interaction. Forcing them to come in 3 days is ridiculous and they are starting to find work elsewhere already. The policy was due to come in in October, but they've postponed it as they can't answer all the Covid questions.

    When challenged and presented with the numbers, the attitude is total arrogance and saying that they will always attract good people.
     
  33. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Yep, can relate. Half of our staff are back office and if in the office, will put headphones on the minute they sit down and then take them off and leave. They don't speak to front office people like me, unless pushed and only on specifics and in fact, would probably require me to raise a support ticket in order to answer a question.
     
  34. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Having been given the poisoned chalice project by the big bosses at my place of 'making sure our flexible working arrangements are fit for the future', it's interesting to see the views on here from different workplaces.

    We're public sector and were already well set before the pandemic, with pretty generous working arrangements. We've still got most at home and don't intend to force anyone in to the office, but undoubtedly there's a certain thing missing from how we work because of everyone being remote. New starters in particular have struggled a fair bit, we think because the usual learning through osmosis by being in an office and being able to ask a quick question or learn by overhearing how someone else does something has withered completely. And everything has become a bit more siloed too. I don't think knowledge spreads as easily and we have an older workforce, some of whom have been resistant to Teams, video calls etc and so just stick to the couple of people they know for advice. Plus productivity is noticeably down with people all at home, although we have to work with organisations affected by Covid and so that knocks on to us to an extent and probably explains at least part of that.

    Big big boss seems to think it's just a case of switching the ratio of office/home time from 60/40 pre-pandemic to 40/60 now. Which I'm resisting at the moment because it's clearly got no evidence base. But most people I speak to seem to want 5/95, which seems too far the other way...
     
  35. Robert Peel

    Robert Peel Squad Player

    An "interesting" task... Having worked for TfL for 14 years until a couple of years ago, I can well imagine that productivity is down and there are those that are resistant. I know my old team there have been asked to do a minimum of 2 days in a week. Prior to that, it was about 1 day a fortnight. It's probably more important to get public sector people into the workplace to keep productivity at a reasonable level and maintain connections, but I can't see a case for more than 2 days a week. That should be enough time to have your meetings, see what people are working on etc. but not demanding they travel in for no particular reason.
     
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