Lockdown’s Last Lingerings - (Covid since L2 ended)

[rockershovel]

Depending on where you read it, and reporting varies in detail, some accounts report that passengers are required to provide a negative Covid test within previous 72 hours before boarding aircraft or ferries. This is a long-standing arrangement, using previously existing legislation, and could have been implemented at any time from Day One onwards.....

 

 

I’m still getting enquiries for casual work at Royal Mail. In seven months there, I didn’t achieve a single complete week, or two consecutive weeks the same, and that appeared to be a general comment on the forty or so casuals I knew (typically between ten and twenty, on any given night) - I didnt know the total number, but I’d estimate it to be around 100 between the various shift groups. I regularly received enquiries for single shifts at Northampton and Cambridge, I never did this but some of the regular casuals routinely did this sort of thing. 

 

Royal Mail could have stabilised the team (because over time, the patterns were fairly clear) by employing around half the number on regular shifts and using a dozen or twenty casuals, but chose not to do so. 

 

This is the reality of modern employment practices. This’s why it is so misleading to focus on figures across the county, why over 50% of the cases for miles around, are focussed in an area of Peterborough you can walk round in fifteen minutes. The media cry on about house parties and joggers, but this is the truth - a concentration of several thousand people, most living in crowded HMO, travelling widely in constantly varying combinations because they have no option. They are excluded from furlough, can’t live on their wages but can’t sustain themselves from benefits either. 

 

Local unemployed residents tend not to involve themselves in this sort of work, because it compromises their benefit claims at their risk, to no useful outcome - because you can almost always come up with some combination of benefits that keeps a roof over your head, but it isn’t easy. 

 

Its important to understand also, that these practices require a constant influx of newcomers. From anecdotal evidence I’d estimate that annual turnover is 200% plus, because workers are constantly moving in search of short term advantage, returning to their homes because they have earned sufficient for the moment, re-qualified for local benefits, or simply given up.   

 

Amazon employ around 1000 at their new facility at Stanground - hard to say, because recruiting practices tend to focus on imported labour. They advertise constantly, Year-round so must have a constant turnover. 

 

Now extrapolate that across the construction industry, which by best available estimates employed around 40% of its workforce from Eastern Europe in 2019. Consider the Leicester outbreak, focussed in the garment trade around the former Imperial Typewriters building, or the Herefordshire case involved contract farm workers (I looked briefly at the short-lived efforts to attract British workers, you’d hardly be surprised they mostly came to nothing). 

 

There need to be some serious questions asked about the nature of employment, and it’s relation to benefits and cost of living, in the aftermath of this. 

[woodenhead]

I was out shopping this morning, for my in laws, I think I have now done most of their shops this year due to shielding and other matters.  I noticed again how many people out shopping were older than me, is it the case that the most likely to be affected by Covid are also the ones out shopping because online shopping and deliveries is a younger generational thing.  Are the younger people staying at home, ordering in takeaways, ordering in food, panic buying but the older more fragile among us are the ones venturing out to do their shopping still?

[john new]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

I was out shopping this morning, for my in laws, I think I have now done most of their shops this year due to shielding and other matters.  I noticed again how many people out shopping were older than me, is it the case that the most likely to be affected by Covid are also the ones out shopping because online shopping and deliveries is a younger generational thing.  Are the younger people staying at home, ordering in takeaways, ordering in food, panic buying but the older more fragile among us are the ones venturing out to do their shopping still?

 

My wife and I (67 & 68) have a mix of reasons for undertaking some shopping in person (food, village pharmacy and the village post office) with pretty much everything else on line these days. Also we have reverted to less frequent bigger Supermarket trips for foodstuffs to minimise risk supplemented by the village convenience store for milk etc. We also avoid some stores for the food shops as the adherence to social distancing by customers varies tremendously.

 

My elderly mother (97) also has a mix - mostly delivered from a village store using telephone ordering with a few items she can't get that way bought by bus trips into the nearest small town [since COVID arrived also with support bubble help from my sister]. That is how it always used to be when I was a lad in the 1950/60s, but the difference now is it is a car/van delivery not a lad on a bike.

 

On the other hand my sister (66) does use on-line ordering for food a lot.

With your comment on food shopping by internet on-line deliveries being an old - v  - young thing therefore I agree it is probably a generational thing - for us we want to see what we are getting and can vary planned meals according to what the shop has. Whether that is just because as older people we always have done it that way who knows, but it is not exclusively so. As for phone orders an old established system that has worked for decades.

 

Edited January 9, 2021 by john new
Removal of unexpected underlining!

[rockershovel]

I’d say that lifestyle is more important. Supermarkets are a great system for driving up volume by varying and expanding the range of available products, they are less good for the present situation where there is a problem filling repeat orders of basics. 

 

My good wife has very much taken to online shopping since her knee problems became a primary limitation. She still takes two hours or more to “check her order” ... I’ve done this in thirty or forty minutes, when she was chair-bound following her knee operation.  I’m sure she would rather go to the shops, if she could. 

 

My elder son and his wife still get most of their shopping from the shops, because with a small child (and especially now they are both wfh) they just like to get out of the house. 

 

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

Depending on where you read it, and reporting varies in detail, some accounts report that passengers are required to provide a negative Covid test within previous 72 hours before boarding aircraft or ferries. This is a long-standing arrangement, using previously existing legislation, and could have been implemented at any time from Day One onwards..... 

My Son in Law went to the Maldives for Christmas and they had to have a negative Covid test within 48 hrs of boarding the plane, and they insisted upon the good test not the 50% accurate if your lucky, they had to go to a private clinic to get the test done and cost a fortune.

[rockershovel]

5 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

My Son in Law went to the Maldives for Christmas and they had to have a negative Covid test within 48 hrs of boarding the plane, and they insisted upon the good test not the 50% accurate if your lucky, they had to go to a private clinic to get the test done and cost a fortune.

 

I missed a boat earlier in the year - it became general practice to regard time offshore as “time in isolation” so if you could once get a job offshore, you could go from one job to the next for as long as you were prepared to stay in the field. A minority of the industry made a killing, while the rest.... didn’t. Hey-ho, that’s the oil industry for you. 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

What did I say yesterday?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55602828

 

The way things go, I fear that HMG will follow the “wait until the advice from specialists has turned into a widespread clamour” approach before acting, but I do hope not, because the clamour might be triggered by a very public ‘crashing’ of s hospital somewhere. 

 

 

 

 

[cessna152towser]

3 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Are the younger people staying at home, ordering in takeaways, ordering in food, panic buying but the older more fragile among us are the ones venturing out to do their shopping still?

A valid point.   My wife and I have been physically visiting our local Morrisons for groceries twice per week, yet my daughter is relying on home delivery.    I refuse to deal in home delivery.  Tried it once with Tesco.  Rude driver demanding an instant signature without allowing time to check contents.   Contents bore little relation to what was ordered and was mainly short dated stuff which we would not normally eat.   "X, Y and Z were out of stock so we substituted......".    In fairness, after complaining, Tesco gave a partial refund.

[chrisf]

I go food shopping mostly twice a week.  This enables me to decide for myself what I shall buy and it gets me out of the house.  As all of what I normally do has become a casualty of the pandemic I have nowhere else to go but the supermarket.  If I could not get out at all I would become stir crazy in very short order.  It's as simple as that.

 

Chris

[Hibelroad]

1 hour ago, cessna152towser said:

A valid point.   My wife and I have been physically visiting our local Morrisons for groceries twice per week, yet my daughter is relying on home delivery.    I refuse to deal in home delivery.  Tried it once with Tesco.  Rude driver demanding an instant signature without allowing time to check contents.   Contents bore little relation to what was ordered and was mainly short dated stuff which we would not normally eat.   "X, Y and Z were out of stock so we substituted......".    In fairness, after complaining, Tesco gave a partial refund.

In contrast we started regular Tesco orders during 1st lockdown and our experience has been very good service . It’s not as easy as personal shopping due to lack of flexibility if things are out of stock but overall they do a good job and I have found Tesco to be quick and generous with refunds if things go a little bit wrong. I would imagine all the other supermarkets have similar service levels. 

[DIW]

17 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

 

Has anyone here present actually received, by leaflet, poster, e-mail, LED sign at the side of the road, or any other medium, any communication from "the authorities" at a local level about the current lockdown, or the case-rate in their area, or the pressures (or not) on their local hospital?

 

 

I receive updates quite often (perhaps when something changes, but never bothered to check correlation) by means of the NHS application down to postcode-specific level (first four characters of the postcode) on my mobile telephone apparatus. I receive more family-specific information from the company which operate DIW jr's swimming lessons - if the lessons are stopped due to lockdown then I don't have a need to go anywhere, so don't check the mobile.

 

I've added bold text above to highlight the specific answer to Kevin's question amist the rest of the posting.

[spikey]

2 hours ago, chrisf said:

... I have nowhere else to go but the supermarket. 

 

I don't understand.  Why do you need a destination?  Unless you are disabled, could you not just go for a nice walk? 

[Nick C]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-55585989

 

I don't get this, surely there are still the same number of people needing to eat...

[chris p bacon]

8 minutes ago, Nick C said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-55585989

 

I don't get this, surely there are still the same number of people needing to eat...

 

There are, but when children are at home what their diet consists of is very different to that at school.

[Nearholmer]

I've wondered about this too.

 

Similar things have happened with milk, and I guess it must be down to the "routes to market" that particular farmers use. If they have big contracts with schools or other places that have closed, but none with supermarkets or microwave-meal makers, they presumably have massive surplus until they get their produce out to a new seller. My guess is its a short-term affect, like the flour shortages earlier in the year as mills swapped from sending big sacks to big users to ending more 1kg bags to shops (and everyone made cakes to stave-off the tedium of lockdown).

 

There was a major shortage of eggs in supermarkets here during Lockdown 1, and I remember one of our neighbours sneaking off at the dead of night to collect trays of eggs from her father who runs a farm ten miles out of town - he had a surplus, because he sells to restaurants.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

The “too many children going to school” problem is impacting locally: headmaster of senior school sent all parents a letter last night saying that only ‘special needs’ children can attend from Monday, the way I read it he is even excluding the children of key/critical workers, because the school can’t handle more while running on-line learning and getting ready to deliver mass testing.

 

I read it as an attempt to restrict routes of transmission too.

 

Our hospital now has ten wards completely filled with Covid patients, none of whom is over 70yo.

[Ben B]

16 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The “too many children going to school” problem is impacting locally: headmaster of senior school sent all parents a letter last night saying that only ‘special needs’ children can attend from Monday, the way I read it he is even excluding the children of key/critical workers, because the school can’t handle more while running on-line learning and getting ready to deliver mass testing.

 

I read it as an attempt to restrict routes of transmission too.

 

Our hospital now has ten wards completely filled with Covid patients, none of whom is over 70yo.

 

The school thing worries me... the Government has widened the definition of 'vulnerable children' so much, one of the primaries my three attend was having to turn away kids by wednesday, as they had so many children who were eligible being signed-up to be sent in.

 

Certainly some of the local secondary schools seem to be going for a business-as-normal attitude (from what I've heard from people I know working at them) and are trying to get as many staff in as possible, and I've heard that's par for the course locally.  There seems to be a real reluctance, if not outright hostility, by some Heads and management towards running on a skeletal staff. The unions are apparently quite concerned.

 

To me, this all seems innexplicable- this is the horrible, out of control contagion that I think we were all expecting last spring, we locked down hard for in March, but it didn't appear as bad as this wave. By all accounts this is the most easily spread, virulent form of the disease, the health service is apparently on the verge of chaos, but there still seems a reluctance to lock down. 

 

The Government says 'act like you have it', but then defines 'vulnerable kid' as any who doesn't have their own private space with a desk and own computer, so the schools are still half full. National sports are still taking place, even the footy is still being played (can't disrupt the national pastime).  It certainly doesn't feel as serious as it should, or even as serious a lockdown as last march, even with a virus that by all accounts is more rampant...

[Oldddudders]

Here some state skools are having children in for alternate weeks. That must play havoc with working parents' routines. Private skools (the fees are often derisorily small, less than 1k euros p.a.) seem to be managing somehow. 

[boxbrownie]

18 minutes ago, Ben B said:

The school thing worries me... the Government has widened the definition of 'vulnerable children' so much,

I am interested to know the extension to the vulnerable children notification, I hadn’t seen that......where has it been stated?

[Nearholmer]

The letter we received overnight seems to amount to the head saying: enough is enough, we simply can’t meet all the conflicting demands placed upon us.

 

It so happens that his brother is chairman of the county council that we abut, so he must be well switched-on to the broader issues around emergency planning, pressures on hospitals etc, and, as I said before, I think he’s also making a slightly UDI attempt to cut transmission too.

 

Is it just me, or do others feel that the virus truly is completely out of control in the SE, London, and East? Surely the PM is going to have to lock us down tighter.

Edited January 10, 2021 by Nearholmer

[hayfield]

17 hours ago, spikey said:

 

I don't understand.  Why do you need a destination?  Unless you are disabled, could you not just go for a nice walk? 

 

We all have a destination, either home or a car park if you have to travel. We are very lucky living in a rural village with plenty of common land and accessible woodlands. We always have a destination though our route may vary during the walks

[Jonboy]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Is it just me, or do others feel that the virus truly is completely out of control in the SE, London, and East? Surely the PM is going to have to lock us down tighter.

It’s a strange discussion.

 

I live with only my wife in a small flat. I work from home and have only attended the office once since lockdown one (in August). My wife works making COVID-relevant medical equipment, so cannot work from home. We are following all the rules regarding staying at home, with occasional trips locally for exercise, and I am only shopping for food once a week alone.

How can it realistically get any tighter for us?

[3rd Rail Exile]

9 minutes ago, Jonboy said:

It’s a strange discussion.

 

I live with only my wife in a small flat. I work from home and have only attended the office once since lockdown one (in August). My wife works making COVID-relevant medical equipment, so cannot work from home. We are following all the rules regarding staying at home, with occasional trips locally for exercise, and I am only shopping for food once a week alone.

How can it realistically get any tighter for us?

I concur totally - there's not much more some of us can stop doing! 

 

I'm single and retired, and have pretty much given up on exercise.  I leave my flat only to go to the local supermarket to buy food and other essentials. 

 

The only things I could realistically do to tighten things up are: 

• Do food shopping on-line, but I've taken the conscious decision not to use up a delivery slot that could be better used by someone who is shielding, or otherwise unable to get to the shops. 
• Stop ordering non-essentials online, in an attempt to reduce the movements of the delivery drivers.  But the non-essential items are (in my view) necessary for my sanity-sustaining modelling hobby... 

[Oldddudders]

I think you guys are, in effect, answering your own question. Basically you are doing what Government and its advisers ask. But plenty of others no doubt aren't. The 'entitled' section of society always carries on doing as it likes until physically stopped, and there aren't the resources to do that in any measurable way. Covid-fatigue, i.e. boredom with being constrained by regulations, has led to greater chance of such people going about their lives as usual - at the very time the new strain makes such 'rebellion' even more dangerous. 

[John M Upton]

One issue is that many are still going into work even if they do have mild symptoms because they still need to put food on the table and know full well that employers will say if they don't turn up for work, they will get the sack.  Supposedly illegal but in the lower paid levels of society, labour is cheap and in plentiful supply.

 

Meanwhile many shops that were shut down last time in March are staying open all be it for click/collect or takeaway like services, this still needs employees to go into work to run them and in turn manufacturing and distribution to service and supply them,

 

These business are using whatever they can to try and keep trading otherwise they will never reopen again no matter what promises the Government make about support which many no longer believe.  

 

In the end, bills need to be paid, food needs to be put on the table and as far as possible within the restrictions, people are having through no choice of their own to continue as best as they can as normal.

 

This of course leads to far more schoolkids being sent back into school for reasons I suspect may not be all that applicable....

 

Meanwhile private fee paying schools are still sitting their IGCSE's so the privileged rich kids will get their qualifications this year whilst the bog standard comp state school kids have been tossed on the scrapheap for the second year on the bounce.