Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[101]

8 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

There are positives and negatives about commuting to an office.  There are some things that are better done in face to face meetings, in my specific job being able to go up to people at their desk and be available at our desks for people to come to us is a large part of our job.  I think people starting their careers or new jobs will find it hard to learn and build relationships with colleagues working from home 100% of the time.  

Aside from work related reasons working from home can also isolate people who live on their own.  It can cause problems with a work-life balance, it can feel claustrophobic.  Not everyone has a house set up for working from home easily.  In addition some people thrive on social interaction and dealing with people and a lot of that is lost.  On social media there can be a dominant narrative about offices being horrific places and working from home being the future but a lot of people can enjoy and thrive on it.  I saw a piece by a journalist about this a few weeks ago, I'll try and find it.

Obivously there are big postiives from more working from home as well and all of this is kind of moot given there is a huge outbreak of a virus that is killing thousands of people so working from home is absolutley correct for the next few months at the very least.

That article sounds very interesting but has not been my experience of offices. Everyone will be different, everyone has different offices and commutes. 

At the end of the day a choice is all that's required a choice between working in an office 5 days a week or once a fortnight or never that's one of the many many changes I would hope to see.

Edited January 21, 2021 by 101

[Left Back]

2 minutes ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

sorry to be mister doom but be careful what you wish for,  the post covid business world could be the most cut throat ever seen, if a job can be done from another country then it can be done by someone from another country,  there are over a 100 million people in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean who speak English as either their first language or are 100% fluent in it and they are well educated .  cash strapped companies may end up decided to outsource many or all of there operation that do not require a physical presence at the worksite in the uk or wherever else. I can't for the life of me think why big bad companys will suddenly just let their first world staff swan about like gap year students when they could have 5 Indians working 12 hour days for the same price.  maybe some will who knows, I think yes are dreamin!

This has been happening for years but as you say it will only be accelerated.  Contact centres and I.T. Were the first to go.  Other corporate functions will follow.

[Dons_1988]

4 minutes ago, 101 said:

It was a general point. Normal life as it was meant extremely long periods of time commuting. The debate has moved on from that point, of course people don't enjoy it. I made a wider point about how we shouldn't go back but instead forward and part of that was ditching the commute.

Right ok let's accept that your point is that you're not a fan of the daily commute and move on.

[101]

Just now, Dons_1988 said:

Right ok let's accept that your point is that you're not a fan of the daily commute and move on.

But I'm not a fan of the daily commute!!!! 

Spoiler

Woops

Spoiler

Sorry was still willfully ignoring posts 

Spoiler

Jokes. Yes I have taken up enough posts today.

 

 

 

[Todd_is_God]

@101 what do you take in your moring coffee?

Just so I can avoid it.

[101]

Just now, Todd_is_God said:

@101 what do you take in your moring coffee?

Just so I can avoid it.

Commuter tears.

[The Moonster]

19 minutes ago, 101 said:

I do however find the want to go back to commuting baffling and I'm yet to be persuaded that sitting on a train for 3 hours a day is anyone's idea of a good time.

Perhaps I've missed it, but who has said this?

[vikingTON]

2 hours ago, Stellaboz said:

Absolutely this. We've totally fucked it now, there was a glimmer of hope but it wasn't taken up. The absolute necessity of reducing our carbon dump into our atmosphere (that protects us from dying quite simply) has been completely ignored on the global scale. All anyone seems to care about is what Trump has tweeted next and if the pubs are open. If that's the attitude then we deserve to die off ASAP.

Get yourself to f**k. The onus is not on the general public to sit under a glorified house arrest for years because it just so happens to help a climate change agenda. 

No surprise to see a Malthusian lust for population die-off rearing its ugly head again in the green movement though: it's been their answer to every problem since the 1960s.

[Todd_is_God]

1 minute ago, 101 said:

Commuter tears.

[101]

1 minute ago, The Moonster said:

Perhaps I've missed it, but who has said this?

I'm not going back into it. My reply to Find sums up my thoughts.

[Detournement]

4 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

This is an argument for widespread trade union membership, not meekly keeping quiet lest conditions get even worse.

BBC bias thread for this pish but there's an enormous ongoing strike action by British Gas engineers over this kind of thing just now with precious little news coverage.

It's not that kind of thing at all. 

Fixing a boiler can't be done from anywhere else other than in front of a boiler it's not a WFH job. 

[ICTChris]

I think there's a fashionable miserablism sometimes in modern life.  I am lucky in that I like the people I work with, I enjoy my job.  I used to quite like going into the office, for both work and social reasons, quite a few of my colleagues in the past have become my good friends.  To read some people you'd think that going into an office to work is a massive punishment.  

Edited January 21, 2021 by ICTChris

[effeffsee_the2nd]

Just now, MixuFruit said:

*Sigh* 

I was just meaning unions are the way to challenge unethical employers.

I agree, but things like outsourcing are business decisions, no UK trade union has that much clout to be able to influence that

[effeffsee_the2nd]

1 minute ago, ICTChris said:

I think there's a fashionable miserablism sometimes in modern life.  I am lucky in that I like the people I work with, I enjoy my job.  I used to quite like going into the office, for both work and social reasons, quite a few of my colleagues in the past have become my good friends.  To read some people you'd think that going into an office to do an administrative task was like being marched at gunpoint through a minefield.

yeah there is much of this going on, especially middle aged c***s on facebook!  I don't mind my work, your unlikely to be best mates with every single person you work with. if you are someone who thinks that you are somehow different from all your co-workers because they are all idiots or  they are all arseholes then I've got bad news for you i'm afraid

[ICTChris]

Getting back on topic, one year ago today it was confirmed by Chinese authorities that the new coronavirus was transmitting between people.

[Detournement]

2 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

*Sigh* 

I was just meaning unions are the way to challenge unethical employers.

Yeah but you can only challenge unethical employers if you have some leverage. 

Asda did the same thing British Gas are doing now and due to the Asda workers being in a weaker position they had to accept it. Rolls Royce workers who were previously in a very strong position had to accept horrific redundancies this year because the arse fell out of the aviation industry.

I find it unlikely that private sector office workers are going to be able to organise against offshoring. 

[Detournement]

1 minute ago, ICTChris said:

Getting back on topic, one year ago today it was confirmed by Chinese authorities that the new coronavirus was transmitting between people.

Is every single day going to be an anniversary?

[vikingTON]

56 minutes ago, 101 said:

 

ETA, if you want inequalities to rumble on Marshy away and join the mad Tories down south.

 

40 minutes ago, 101 said:

Maybe I am. But I don't want to return to a world that we left, that means the poorest are reliant of food banks, the world is spiraling into a climate disaster and a Tory Government is common place.

If digging my heels in against those things in an abrasive manner is being an arsehole then so be it. But it would be, in my opinion, the biggest failure in human history to simply return to normal. We have learnt so much and to return to my points of Funding the NHS, reducing carbon emissions and reducing meat consumption if we don't tackle these then we are destined to be in the grip of another pandemic and that's for me too big a price to pay.

Lockdown has produced the largest recession in the UK for three hundred fucking years and a ballooning of the national debt. It has also seen widening inequality rather than some Blitz-spirit levelling within society.

Your 'end food banks and fund the NHS' rallying cry is fantasy island nonsense then. What's coming down the chute is turbocharged austerity for years. The mainstream British left should have thought about this while demanding rolling lockdowns every five minutes and endless support packages for everyone affected: it has now completely sunk their agenda for progressive change. 

[ICTChris]

I've also just realised that tomorrow it will be one year since I started this thread.

What a year it's been.  From being a semi-humourous league table among P&Bs sex tourists South East Asian residents we've moved onto be probably the worlds foremost forum for epidemiological debate and discussion.  We've had Granny Danger arguing about bottles of Chateux du Shitefaced with his wife, philpy grassing everyone he sees up, Todd going from forum NPC to the principle arbiter of public health crises in Western Europe.  What a year.

[Gordon EF]

7 hours ago, HibsFan said:

I think it’s really important, going back to the discussion of a couple pages ago that I can’t be bothered quoting, that when the hopeful progression down the tiers comes this spring and/or summer, we don’t settle for tier 2 or 3 as if they’re a great compromise that we should be grateful for.

If you were to wake up, forget this last year had happened and find out those restrictions, you’d be utterly horrified by them and how everyone’s happily gone along with it. Now, we all (give or take) agree that they were a necessary sacrifice to be made in a pandemic without a vaccine context, but now we have a vaccine that will - hopefully by the end of spring - have seen all of our vulnerable and elderly citizens protected, there should be absolutely no accepting of tier 1, 2 or 3 as any kind of new normal.

Phrases like “post-COVID life” are giving me the absolute fucking fear at the minute, I won’t lie. It’s made me, a lifelong socialist, resort to the hope that rampant capitalism’s going to go “f**k your health concerns we’re back with a bang”, reopen every airline, business and entertainment venue, and kick these zero Covid weirdos into the long grass, where they rightly belong.

The tiers are a means to an end, and that end is normal life (February 2020 style) returning to us ASAP. They are not the new normal and none of us should accept them as so beyond this summer at the very latest.

Exactly.

On a more optimistic note, look at how public opinion swayed the governments over Christmas. Now, by any objective measure, gurning about not getting your Christmas at that exact point in the pandemic was utter stupidity. No expert, scientist, doctor would have wanted the Christmas restrictions lift but essentially public opinion was "f**k you, we're doing it anyway". Above a certain tipping point of public opinion, there's very little governments can do about it. If if they were inclined to keep fairly tight restrictions past the point where the majority are vaccinated and cases and deaths have dropped down to a minimum, enough people just wouldn't accept it and they'd have no choice about it. 

The difference between that and Christmas being that people would be entirely correct to feel that way.