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The grumpy thread


outlaw118

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I think it made a lot of people reassess their lives, whether it was the realisation that sometimes there are factors beyond your control that can take loved ones away or that you really didnt need to endure spending time in offices with idiots after all.  And who knew that all Nurses needed was a round of applause every week?  There was me thinking some sort of financial reward/danger money would have suited.  

For me it happened at about the right time.  With the kids largely finished with education and my work situation trashed by Covid and that other thing involving taking back control, the suggestion of giving NZ another shot arrived in a timely manner.  And you know what?  The place has faults but overall it was a good move.  And if it had gone wrong at least I gave it another go.

We all spend too long not doing stuff in case it doesnt work out but if you are young enough you have time to claw it all back.  And trying something new and failing gives you a truckload of useful perspective. Sometimes some massive unexpected thing is the catalyst to try something else and realise that normal doesnt have to be 

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Yesterday marked three years of working from home for me.  My old employer announced blanket home working starting on the 23rd of March, 2020.  My department (IT) were some of the first allowed back on-site (alongside maintenance staff) around the end of June.  From that point on I did one or two days a week on site, with the rest at home.  Since April last year I've been at a new employer and worked from home full-time. 

I've been 'on-site' three times in the year, once to Crewe, once to Bath, once to Cheltenham to visit customers.  Each time, my expenses were paid (and one one occasion the customer put me up in a four-star hotel in the centre of Bath - that was nice).  The company I work for ditched their offices long before COVID and have been remote ever since.  I was interviewed over Teams, my laptop shipped out to me and I didn't physically meet anybody from my company until late October last year.

It's how I like it and not having to make small talk all the time with colleagues is a bit of a dream.

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1 hour ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Yesterday marked three years of working from home for me.  My old employer announced blanket home working starting on the 23rd of March, 2020.  My department (IT) were some of the first allowed back on-site (alongside maintenance staff) around the end of June.  From that point on I did one or two days a week on site, with the rest at home.  Since April last year I've been at a new employer and worked from home full-time. 

I've been 'on-site' three times in the year, once to Crewe, once to Bath, once to Cheltenham to visit customers.  Each time, my expenses were paid (and one one occasion the customer put me up in a four-star hotel in the centre of Bath - that was nice).  The company I work for ditched their offices long before COVID and have been remote ever since.  I was interviewed over Teams, my laptop shipped out to me and I didn't physically meet anybody from my company until late October last year.

It's how I like it and not having to make small talk all the time with colleagues is a bit of a dream.

Ditto for me & the missus since 2021.  Next month she goes to Northumbria, May I go to Norwich. That's the first either of us have been on site in 2023. It suits us (but not everybody I guess) and it's interesting to see how so much of the 'social' side of work used to be just getting utterly pissed.
I've just turned 60 and, yes, things feel a bit more 'meh' but I'm not sure that's age, COVID or just the UK as a whole is a bit 'meh'.
e.g. trip to Norwich - cannot get excited, once upon a time I'd have loved that but 2 nights away plus 6 hours on a train each way is not floating my boat.

Top tip - stopped reading the news and now cherry pick like fuck direct from the likes of Reuters - the UK media is so negative it was really grinding me down (but then positive does not sell advertising space?)

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22 hours ago, chaseracer said:

I have a very extrovert colleague who insists on organising 'fun* nights out' which inevitably involve loud places and copious volumes of alcohol.

"Team building"...?  I think not.

I was browsing the jobs pages a few weeks ago and there was an advert for drivers at a local haulage place. Said ‘regular nights out’, I’ve enough on going out drinking with the friends I’ve got let alone a load more social commitments. 

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5 hours ago, Remspoor said:

Post Covid Blues? We are not the only ones.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2023%2F03%2F23%2Flong-lockdown-has-left-britain-infantilised%2F

I feel that there is more to come, (not lockdowns).

Bloody hell, I'm agreeing with something written by Lord Frost. Time to hand in my Labour Party membership card. 

Lockdown was a curious imposition. No western country had ever used such draconian measures to control its people before (albeit what we actually got in the UK was very much less draconian than places like Australia). The weird thing was that it was accepted without any criticism or debate. Anyone who did criticise or question it was dismissed as a covidiot or a covid denier. Unusually some of the first people who did dissent from the approved measures were in fact the people responsible for their imposition, e.g. Neil Ferguson, Catherine Calderwood, Dominic Cummings, followed by lots of politicians including notably the Prime Minister and then the Health Secretary (FFS!). I really do think the whole process caused massive long lasting social and economic harm, and resulted in a lasting lack of faith in the government and various government agencies. 

I do think the government was effectively forced into the measures it took, the media, specialist advisors and the risk of looking like the odd man out (ironic because Brexit) meant that they were unlikely to have considered any other path. One of the problems with following scientific or medical advice was that the worst case scenario had to be considered, the greater good was the only consideration (to the detriment of the individual) and there was a lack of consideration of non medical considerations, like mental health or social well being. Decisions were not made or considered holistically, they simply dealt with the matter of virus containment and ignored any wider or consequent issues.

Speaking personally I quite enjoyed some aspects of lockdown, but I am married with a family, and live in the countryside amongst very few people so I didn't really notice the difference. I'd have felt very differently fifteen or twenty years ago when I was much more socially active. 

 

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Lots of lingering effects from Covid.

I am a lucky one.  Never caught it and have had no problems due to the four injections, not a thing.

But I saw a video from the sister of Daina Cowern, on YouTube as "Physics Girl".

She always looked fit and healthy but is in serious trouble since contracting Covid.

Dianna Cowern, also known as "Physics Girl" on social media, has been dealing with chronic fatigue and other symptoms for nine months. She has a severe case of long COVID -- experiencing symptoms long after an initial COVID infection.  "I can't talk...I can't move," said Cowern in a video on Facebook.

Quite appalling in someone so young.  A year in bed completely indisposed.

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24 minutes ago, warch said:

Lockdown was a curious imposition. No western country had ever used such draconian measures to control its people before (albeit what we actually got in the UK was very much less draconian than places like Australia). The weird thing was that it was accepted without any criticism or debate.

I think there was a bit of "Blitz spirit" going on, at least during the first lockdown.  There was a feeling of "we're all in this together", it was quite noticeable on YouTube, with various musicians posting videos of themselves performing at home, celebrity chefs doing cooking tutorials, and what's-his-face with his online PE classes for kids who were stuck at home.  Even Kermit the Frog gave a special performance of Rainbow Connection.  I think at the time we all thought it was going to be a tough few months and then everything would go back to normal (normal as in the way things were before the pandemic).  As it dragged on and on and lockdown followed lockdown, that spirit faded and everyone just got fed up.

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14 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

  As it dragged on and on and lockdown followed lockdown, that spirit faded and everyone just got fed up.

And people like Cummings took the piss.  My blitz spirit faded when that little twat drove to his parents with Covid and then carried on driving about once up there in Co. Durham.  And then tried to fob us off with 'testing his eyesight'.  And it turns out that the house he was staying in had been built entirely without planning permission; his parents were subsequently granted it retrospectively.

If us plebs had done any one of those things we would have been looking at thousands in fines.  And breathe...

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can't help but feel a bit "aw diddums" when people boo-hoo about how hard it was working from home

as patient transport we were just as close to covid as nurses & paramedics but hey you know we got the clap- still haven't found anywhere to spend them though!

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48 minutes ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

can't help but feel a bit "aw diddums" when people boo-hoo about how hard it was working from home

as patient transport we were just as close to covid as nurses & paramedics but you know we the clap- still haven't found anywhere to spend them though!

 had the joy of supporting the school at the time  , lots of little darlings being sent in with "just a cough " , but the protective bubble would keep us safe ..

bollocks , it was going around like wildfire and no one gave one , not even a extension to sick leave , thats your 3 weeks sick  used up ,your on SSP now !

glad I am out of the care system , keep getting begging letters off recruitment sites with "good" offers , filed in bin ....

 

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On 3/24/2023 at 4:04 PM, Noel Tidybeard said:

can't help but feel a bit "aw diddums" when people boo-hoo about how hard it was working from home

as patient transport we were just as close to covid as nurses & paramedics but you know we the clap- still haven't found anywhere to spend them though!

I think working from home was and is fine, but working from home combined with home schooling (us non essentials invariably had at least one and usually two rounds of this) was gruelling to say the least. Me and Mrs warch ended up starting work at 6 and finishing at 6 to allow for all the teaching time/IT support in between. 

My sympathies go out to all the teachers attempting the cat herdingly difficult task of keeping the attention of twenty seven years olds twice a day via Teams, some of them probably deserved the fucking George Cross for their efforts.

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19 minutes ago, MikeR said:

not even a extension to sick leave , thats your 3 weeks sick  used up ,your on SSP now !

glad I am out of the care system , keep getting begging letters off recruitment sites with "good" offers , filed in bin ....

 

My employer had a strange arrangement where they  refused to pay our contractual sick pay if we got Covid (managers discretion innit) but would pay us to be off if a family member contracted Covid. We could only return to work once the family member started to test negative, however they never asked for any proof so some colleagues had family members  suffering with Covid for months on end. 

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Seems that parcels are heavily prioritised by RM management these days, while letters can go whistle. Which is a bit of a disgrace, given the much-increased cost of standard letter stamps over the past few years while parcels have actually become cheaper to send. 

On the flipside of this, I posted a parcel in Belfast, standard second class, on Wednesday lunchtime.

It was delivered to its destination in Essex on Thursday morning.

I'm glad I didn't bother stumping up £14 for next day guaranteed... especially as the one time I did pay for next day guaranteed, it got lost for a month...

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We (posties) have a thing called lapsing. A delivery will be 'lapsed'. That is it will be broken up into probably twenty bits and spread amongst the other duties. There's five duties lapsed in our office. It used to only happen if it was considered a light day and we had time to spare. Now it is permanent simply due to lack of staff. 

But a lot of the duties are already too long so they don't have time for the lapsing so it gets left behind day after day and maybe once a week they will find somebody to clear it all up. 

On top of that if you have the audacity to actually have a week off you'll be lucky if it goes out twice in that week and you fully expect to come back to right shit show that will take another week to clear. 

It is disgraceful but now seems to be a permanent state of affairs. We're all as pissed off about it as you are. 

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26 minutes ago, Yoss said:

We (posties) have a thing called lapsing. A delivery will be 'lapsed'. That is it will be broken up into probably twenty bits and spread amongst the other duties. There's five duties lapsed in our office. It used to only happen if it was considered a light day and we had time to spare. Now it is permanent simply due to lack of staff. 

But a lot of the duties are already too long so they don't have time for the lapsing so it gets left behind day after day and maybe once a week they will find somebody to clear it all up. 

On top of that if you have the audacity to actually have a week off you'll be lucky if it goes out twice in that week and you fully expect to come back to right shit show that will take another week to clear. 

It is disgraceful but now seems to be a permanent state of affairs. We're all as pissed off about it as you are. 

Your ultimate boss seemed to lie about this to parliament according to letters to private eye . At the moment we are getting two deliveries a week to work and similar to home ( same DO). I am sure it’s not the fault of delivery staff.

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Yeah, that was quite funny. He was either blatantly lying or genuinely has no idea what is going on in the the company he is supposed to be in charge of. Either way he has been shown up to be completely out of his depth. 

After he got recalled to Parliament and lied* a second time the Select Committee have referred us to Ofcom as we are clearly not fulfilling our Universal Service Obligation. Don't know if it will make any difference. They can fine us but if the fine is smaller than the money they are saving from being about 20% short staffed they will probably consider it a win. 

*allegedly (wink) 

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I must just be lucky with post. I usually get second class stuff two or three days after it was posted, even from S. England and today I got a letter posted yesterday first class, admittedly from only 5 miles away.
I'll always use RM for sending stuff I sell on eBay, I don't care if Evri/Herpes etc are a quid cheaper I like my stuff arriving.  Likewise I'll always try and buy from someone using the postal system if for no other reason than I tend to be in when the postie gets hare and if I'm not the local sorting office is literally three streets away.

 

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Vehicles are proving quite stressful this week.

The MOT has run out on my Focus, this is deliberate as it was due just after Miss C's Corsa.  I'm about to go away for 10 days or so and the Dacia was running well so I figured I could use it and the motorbike for a bit then put the car through the test when I got back giving a good gap between tests.

A friend then messaged, flying into Birmingham tomorrow and my lift home is stuck in France, can you get me?  I didn't really want to, so explained my only legal vehicle was designed in the 60s.  She still needed a lift and was up for an adventure.  This was slightly more of an adventure than planned as a brake pipe burst on the way back!  Fortunately we still made it home without hitting anything.

Down to the bike then, theoretically everywhere I thought I needed to go was doable but since then I've found I need to take the girls to all sorts of things.  This led to me driving home in a Luton van last night so I could attend a parents evening that lasted 5 minutes.

MOT is now booked for Tuesday, if it's a tricky fail he'll be fixing the brake pipe instead!

On the plus side at least I don't need to fetch Schrodingers campervan on Monday now.  Idiot converter has found some money and bought it from the owner. 

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9 hours ago, warch said:

Bloody hell, I'm agreeing with something written by Lord Frost. Time to hand in my Labour Party membership card. 

Lockdown was a curious imposition. No western country had ever used such draconian measures to control its people before (albeit what we actually got in the UK was very much less draconian than places like Australia). The weird thing was that it was accepted without any criticism or debate. Anyone who did criticise or question it was dismissed as a covidiot or a covid denier. Unusually some of the first people who did dissent from the approved measures were in fact the people responsible for their imposition, e.g. Neil Ferguson, Catherine Calderwood, Dominic Cummings, followed by lots of politicians including notably the Prime Minister and then the Health Secretary (FFS!). I really do think the whole process caused massive long lasting social and economic harm, and resulted in a lasting lack of faith in the government and various government agencies. 

I do think the government was effectively forced into the measures it took, the media, specialist advisors and the risk of looking like the odd man out (ironic because Brexit) meant that they were unlikely to have considered any other path. One of the problems with following scientific or medical advice was that the worst case scenario had to be considered, the greater good was the only consideration (to the detriment of the individual) and there was a lack of consideration of non medical considerations, like mental health or social well being. Decisions were not made or considered holistically, they simply dealt with the matter of virus containment and ignored any wider or consequent issues.

Speaking personally I quite enjoyed some aspects of lockdown, but I am married with a family, and live in the countryside amongst very few people so I didn't really notice the difference. I'd have felt very differently fifteen or twenty years ago when I was much more socially active. 

 

It’s easy looking back saying this and that we’re unnecessary but at the time, we were really in uncharted territory. This disease was incredibly infectious but somewhat unusually the effects ranged from a trivial cough to death. 

I think the way the vaccines were developed so quickly was incredible ( unless the scientists had a heads up and had been working on it for years, who knows), and the government’s response was initially very good until they started taking the piss.

OK so some people made a lot of money out of things line supplying PPE but that happens in crises. A few people always make a lot of money from other people’s suffering, take wars for example. Not much you can do if what they’re doing us not illegal. Some one has something you need in short supply, if you’ve no scruples ,( I.e a “good” business man ), you charge what you want.

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5 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

It’s easy looking back saying this and that we’re unnecessary but at the time, we were really in uncharted territory. This disease was incredibly infectious but somewhat unusually the effects ranged from a trivial cough to death. 

I think the way the vaccines were developed so quickly was incredible ( unless the scientists had a heads up and had been working on it for years, who knows), and the government’s response was initially very good until they started taking the piss.

OK so some people made a lot of money out of things line supplying PPE but that happens in crises. A few people always make a lot of money from other people’s suffering, take wars for example. Not much you can do if what they’re doing us not illegal. Some one has something you need in short supply, if you’ve no scruples ,( I.e a “good” business man ), you charge what you want.

To be fair I thought this at the time as well, this isn’t a conclusion I reached with hindsight. It was obvious lockdown and scaring people about a virus that probably wasn’t going to kill or seriously harm most of them was going to cause long term social and mental health issues but this was never apparently a material consideration. 
 


 

 

 

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6 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

It’s easy looking back saying this and that we’re unnecessary but at the time, we were really in uncharted territory. This disease was incredibly infectious but somewhat unusually the effects ranged from a trivial cough to death. 

 I think the way the vaccines were developed so quickly was incredible ( unless the scientists had a heads up and had been working on it for years, who knows), and the government’s response was initially very good until they started taking the piss.

OK so some people made a lot of money out of things line supplying PPE but that happens in crises. A few people always make a lot of money from other people’s suffering, take wars for example. Not much you can do if what they’re doing us not illegal. Some one has something you need in short supply, if you’ve no scruples ,( I.e a “good” business man ), you charge what you want.

As far as I remember from discussions, a couple of years or so ago, with someone involved in this Jenner Labs, the people who developed the AZ vaccine, were expecting something like this. They'd monitored SARS and MERS and got a basic 'recipe' together that they then tailored. It still was 24/7 and them being isolated from  their families for a long time to ensure that they didn't catch it.

They also bought in a SARS and MERS expert, along with his samples, from China once the flights restarted. 

 

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6 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

It’s easy looking back saying this and that we’re unnecessary but at the time, we were really in uncharted territory. This disease was incredibly infectious but somewhat unusually the effects ranged from a trivial cough to death. 

I think the way the vaccines were developed so quickly was incredible ( unless the scientists had a heads up and had been working on it for years, who knows), and the government’s response was initially very good until they started taking the piss.

OK so some people made a lot of money out of things line supplying PPE but that happens in crises. A few people always make a lot of money from other people’s suffering, take wars for example. Not much you can do if what they’re doing us not illegal. Some one has something you need in short supply, if you’ve no scruples ,( I.e a “good” business man ), you charge what you want.

The problem is that if the 'some people' made their outrageous profits by being 'friends' with government ministers what you have is corruption. Corruption of a very similar kind (albeit not on the same scale) as 1990s Russia or many other tinpot nations. We should be better than that.

Michelle Mone is just the tip of this vile, sordid iceberg

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42 minutes ago, chadders said:

As far as I remember from discussions, a couple of years or so ago, with someone involved in this Jenner Labs, the people who developed the AZ vaccine, were expecting something like this. They'd monitored SARS and MERS and got a basic 'recipe' together that they then tailored. It still was 24/7 and them being isolated from  their families for a long time to ensure that they didn't catch it.

They also bought in a SARS and MERS expert, along with his samples, from China once the flights restarted. 

 

I suppose it wasn’t a new thing, we’ve had coronaviruses forever, so there probably was an understanding of how to deal with it. 
 

During 2020 I was listening to a lot of the old Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant/Karl Pilkington podcasts that they did for XFM in about 2002. It was interesting in hindsight that SARS (another virus from China) was being talked about as the next global pandemic. Felt very relatable at the time.

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4 hours ago, warch said:

I suppose it wasn’t a new thing, we’ve had coronaviruses forever, so there probably was an understanding of how to deal with it. 
 

During 2020 I was listening to a lot of the old Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant/Karl Pilkington podcasts that they did for XFM in about 2002. It was interesting in hindsight that SARS (another virus from China) was being talked about as the next global pandemic. Felt very relatable at the time.

I’m sure it was here well before we were told. I’ve not had covid but in Jan 2020 I had all the symptoms as did many peopleI know. None of us had ever been to China.

Just assumed it was a normal winter bug.

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My take on life after the last three years?

Everyone thinks everything should revolve around themselves all the time because they've forgotten how to interact with others.
The vast majority of people all hate each other.
Nobody can be arsed to do their job properly and there's no incentive to do so.
Those in charge seem to want to keep everyone as downtrodden as possible so that they eventually just give up.

And ever since I have had the virus it's as if it's attacked my brain and removed the parts that allow me to enjoy things - and I almost constantly feel dirty and as if I shouldn't be allowed near other people.  Could this have been its real intention?  To turn everyone against each other and spread hatred and suspicion?

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