My Suggestion To Solve Lockdown

[papasmurf]

Or maybe nothing to do with being a Tory, just being a modern politician?

You mean slimy untrustworthy bastard.

[Scott777]

Tory Mark 2.

Or maybe nothing to do with being a Tory, just being a modern politician?

[Barry]

A school headmistress I follow on Twitter is confident the schools will be reopening after Easter, at the latest by May 4th.

That should bring a semblance of normality to many young families. I do hope this is true as balancing the economic damage, the social and health restrictions of a lockdown, including restriction of basic human rights have to be weighed with the true scale of the disease.

The Spanish health authorities are saying that for every recorded infection in their country, there are 15 others no recorded.

In the UK, where testing is only in hospitals now, I would guess the under reporting of infections is at least 20/1. When the peak of deaths is over, we seriously need to get Britain back to work.

As DD has succinctly pointed out, if the economy fails, so will the NHS, which is really a pillar of the UK GOV.

[papasmurf]

I'm sure our resident Cornish Tory hater will be dancing with glee if he receives news of Boris being put on a ventilator and will be drunk as a skunk for a month if they switch it off ...

I am not Cornish I only live here, however should Boris cark it I know plenty of people who would celebrate until they realise just how nasty a bastard Raab is.

(On Sky news just now PPE still not arriving where it is wanted.)

[johnofgwent]

And what about everyone else?  How did Tony Blair do?

As I have pointed out more than once...



Tory arrogance incompetence and dogma destroyed my chosen career ruined my brothers hopes of a career of any kind and caused me to lose a tax tribunal in which and i quote 'bed and breakfast accommodation cannot be considered a legitimate business expense because you are not using the facility for any business purpose.'



The case in front of mine was lost by twenty barristers whose claim that their formal and ridiculously so, business dress worn in court under their robes was an allowable business expense was kicked out because it could be worn as a business suit outside of the court  and their disinclination to do so did not amount to it being a uniform....



The case after me was lost on similar grounds.



These were the patterns of tory attitude to me.



They also permitted me to tender for government classified work and maintain my clearance with the client



And they allowed my company to earn me a tax paid  lifestyle from 1990 to 1999 equivalent to that acquired by a salary of £150,000 pa in today's money.



Then Tony Blair arrived.



He destroyed the little guy in my sector and specifically removed the right of the little guy to hold clearance via a client.



My company could no longer tender in this area.



He removed the right of small company directors employing and / or giving shares and dividends to wives by implementing S660 while of course MPs were free to employ friends and family at public expense and do not get me started on IR35



It took about six years for my business to actually tank, but when it did, the cataracts kicked in too. Oh joy.



Welsh Labour had run the NHS into the fucking ground so it took several years during which I could not work, nor would the bastards give me any state benefits, and the jobcentre scum actually laughed in my face when I said I could not register online as unemployed as the cataracts inward waiting for the NHS to remove meand I was unable to.use a computer



I had to use every fucking penny I had to keep the house and now I earn £35000 pa, have done without a pay rise for five years, probably wont earn anything this coming year, and Browns fucked my pension. And Yours too.



And dont, DONT get me started on Blair letting the fucking immigrants including the one with AIDS who raped my daughter get in here. Just DONT.



I'm sure our resident Cornish Tory hater will be dancing with glee if he receives news of Boris being put on a ventilator and will be drunk as a skunk for a month if they switch it off ...



For me though, he and his kind have committed only the crime of being total arse holes.



The ones I want to hear are in a COVID morgue all carry labour party member cards. Apart from one who used to be a lib dem.



But I wont celebrate if I hear any are toe tagged in that fashion. That would be ungentlemanly. It will, however, become necessary to revise my current status as an agnostic.



EDIT:



Oh yeah one more thing



Dad, and Grandad before him used the same business model to register their clearance to tender for classified work. Admittedly grandad started as an employee, but was his own man when Chamberlain said he had received no such undertaking.



If Churchill, Heath and Wilson had the same attitude to the little guy that Blair had, most of you reading this wouldn't be here at all, anyone older than me down to maybe ten years younger would be replying in the same german language I would be writing it because the RAF would not have Grandads radar experiments to count on and without his bolt on bits you might have seen the luftwaffe coming after they finished the blitz but youd never have stopped them, and the rest would be speaking Russian because Suez would never have happened,  IBM would never have made the 6400 and Dad would never have weaponized it for our nuclear force..... so when the Yanks failed to deliver on their promised missile for the Vulcan we'd have had sod all.

[papasmurf]

And what about everyone else?  How did Tony Blair do?

Tory Mark 2.

[Scott777]

Every time in my life there has been a Tory government it has been a disaster for me personally, and for friends and relatives.

And what about everyone else?  How did Tony Blair do?

[papasmurf]

...



The tories have shown they are perfectly happy to tank the economy when it suits their ideology

Every time in my life there has been a Tory government it has been a disaster for me personally, and for friends and relatives.

[johnofgwent]

We've already been through all this on the other thread - a minority, but a significant percentage, of younger fit and healthy people become very ill and require hospital treatment.  If they don't get it, they will die and the death rate will be pushing up towards 15%.



Do you honestly believe that a government, especially a Conservative governmnet, would crash stop the entire economy unless they had no choice - plus every other government in the world even the US, where normally they would sacrifise their own Grandmother for a 2 point rise in the Dow Jones.



Not to mention, many of these vulnerable elderly people with conditions are the exact people who require regular, up close and personal medical treatment.  It's easy to be an arm chair expert but don't you think that maybe the real experts have been wargaming this for a good while?

Ok.



To the first point I have said this already myself, move on.



It's the second I'm amused at.



Within my adult working life



Nigel Lawson Boomed And Busted the Sadly Broke (sorry, Bradley Stoke) commuter belt deliberately by applying a totally insane way of removing a tax break for those living in sin. His six month warning of dual income miras relief cessation for unmarried couples caused a property boom pushing my home from 39000 to 85000 in six months and an instant drop to 55000 in a weekend.



The resultant negative equity (which did not affect me I bought a few months before at 39k...) dragged the fools who had rushed to buy as the window closed into.misery for a decade.



Norman Lamont went mano a mano with George Soros and list over vthe ideological stupidity called the narrow band ERM.



And dont get me started on the fucking miners strike



...



The tories have shown they are perfectly happy to tank the economy when it suits their ideology

[Nalaar]

Then in an emergency situation, you just need other people to do the job, and if they need direction, use the phone.  I can't believe your centre would be forced to shut without you and one colleague providing maintenance.  But even if it was, what's so vital about this centre?

Sure, I'll just 'talk to someone over the phone' about how to maintain the heating system, or Fire panels, and I'm sure there'd be no issue in talking someone through how to drive our forklifts or use any of the rest of our machinery that they don't have licenses or insurance for ::



This would of all been an issue *if* there was some sort of partial/volunteer lockdown, there is no such issue with a total lockdown.

[Scott777]

My job is not management, it's maintenance, from the sewers to the roof and anything in between.

Then in an emergency situation, you just need other people to do the job, and if they need direction, use the phone.  I can't believe your centre would be forced to shut without you and one colleague providing maintenance.  But even if it was, what's so vital about this centre?

[Nalaar]

Why wholly not possible?  If you are well, but in lockdown, you can call people and 'manage' from home.  Why not?

My job is not management, it's maintenance, from the sewers to the roof and anything in between.

[Scott777]

But the idea of *weeks* is something wholly not possible (and that would be assuming that the people go could do some of my job are not also going to be on lockdown because they have a vulnerable family member etc.)

Why wholly not possible?  If you are well, but in lockdown, you can call people and 'manage' from home.  Why not?

[Nalaar]

Well, Nalaar, i'm curious what you 2 do when you are both off sick.

It hasn't happened, thankfully, and in such cases it's conceivable that other staff can do part of our work for a few days.



But the idea of *weeks* is something wholly not possible (and that would be assuming that the people go could do some of my job are not also going to be on lockdown because they have a vulnerable family member etc.)

[Scott777]

We are a Shopping Centre. If we chose to close it would force dozens of other businesses to close whether or not they wanted to continue trading. A voluntary system in which each business could chose if they wanted to keep trading or not would of been a disaster.

Well, Nalaar, i'm curious what you 2 do when you are both off sick.