:covid_19: 😷 🏥 Corona Virus the thread for all your fears ❓

[Saint-or-sinner]

Suited up or still casual?

[gavstar]

Summer casual

[Saint-or-sinner]

Bollocks hanging out and all?
A treat for the patient

[Map-Of-Tasmania]

It’s why I still think the cunts are making strategic errors… this should be about protecting and supporting the vulnerable whilst allowing those who will ‘feel a bit shit for a few days’ get on with things and ensuring we help out all who need it…

[CB-Saint]

Cruise is a tough gig at the moment - the Ayatollah works at Carnival and it is carnage there. Smaller operators like Saga are going to struggle to stay in business

[gavstar]

Got to keep their spirits up somehow

[Map-Of-Tasmania]

Bollocks hanging out is frowned upon in our household ever done I got really pissed one night and walked in on mother in law naked when she was staying over…

[CB-Saint]

So that’s how they are going to claw back the cash they are pouring into the economy

[gavstar]

I can see why you’d frown on it, I mean, why was your mother in law naked in your house? And why does she have bollocks?

[Map-Of-Tasmania]

Just did a little wee

[saintbletch]

@Goatboy

Great for PAYE workers but he self employed have been dry fucked in their ragged shitholes.
Thanks.

@scotty

Quite. 80% of my work is for cruise ships and theatres/clubs etc, so that’s me fucked. Plus I wonder just how many private customers are still going to want me to make house calls to them…
No work = no money.

Got this from my union today.

It suggests that the package that has been announced has had union input.

It also mentions that access to Universal Credit for self-employed workers is available - as you didn’t feel kicked in the teeth enough already.

To be fair to the GMB they say that it’s not enough but is a start…

Dear Danny,

The Chancellor has just made a big announcement on jobs and wages in the UK.

Throughout the week, GMB officers have been pressing Government Ministers on the need to take action to protect - and deliver a ‘People’s Bailout’.

Conservative Ministers and our union - and indeed a Conservative Chancellor – are not natural bedfellows, but in a time of unprecedented national crisis, we have to work together in the interest of workers, jobs and the economy.

That’s what we’re doing.

The package of measures announced today includes:

• Government guaranteeing 80% of workers’ wages, up to £2,500 a month, where they are not working but kept on payroll (backdated to 1 March) with employers able to fund the remaining 20% to full pay – this is reliant on companies keeping workers on the books, so protecting jobs.
• Access to Universal Credit for self-employed workers – this is not enough but is a starting point to build on.
• An extension of interest free loans for businesses in order for them to keep running.

Of course there is more to do. We must ensure all frontline workers have access to protective equipment immediately, that statutory sick pay is at a level people can live on and we will fight for all employers to ensure full pay.

Your union is continuing to work hard for your whether you’re unable to work or holding the fort on the frontline.

Tens of thousands of GMB members continue to put their health at risk to look after our elderly, treat our sick, keep our supermarkets stocked, our lights on and taps running.

I want to pay tribute to each and every one – thank you. I am so proud to be your General Secretary.

We will continue to keep our Coronavirus Hub up to date on a daily basis, you can also keep up to date with the very latest from your union in this very fast-moving situation on social media, please click on the buttons below to follow GMB on Facebook and Twitter.

[Saint-or-sinner]

@saintbletch

Access to Universal Credit for self-employed workers – this is not enough but is a starting point to build on

I’m reading “your on your own, as the insult we’ve agreed proves”.

Just me?

[Map-Of-Tasmania]

Well fuck me… there I was minding my own business in Tescos earlier buying several tins of dog food… OK so maybe 40…

Anyway women behind gets all nosey and asks if I have a load of dogs. I tell her the truth. I have no dogs, but as there is fuck all else on the shelves, I am back on the dog food.

She says ‘back on the dog food, have you eaten it before?’

I tell her the truth, yes but I had to stop as last time I ended up in hospital for 2 months

She says, you were poisoned by the dog food?

I reply, nah, I was run over by a fucking van when I bent down to sniff the arse of a German shepherd.

… bloke behind her pissed himself

[CB-Saint]

This 80% rule

Some companies who might have held onto staff and muddled through are going to be tempted by this - this is a hell of an offer by the govt but this is going to have Unintended consequences

[Map-Of-Tasmania]

Your gags ain’t as good as mine

[Goatboy]

Putting aside that monthly universal universal credit isn’t even equivalent to 3 days wages, I have read that it’s means tested. Partner earns over £16k = no uc.

[Saint-or-sinner]

This puts it well(including all the hype and the financial reasons(although i’d argue they’re underreporting the financial figures)).

"Focusing just on the UK as an example of such policies, the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson has instructed workers to self-isolate for 8 weeks; yet he has implemented no laws to protect them from dismissal from the agency, casual and seasonal work, zero-hour contracts and low-paid self-employment that defines the employment conditions of so many UK workers labouring under Neo-liberal employment legislation. In London alone there are 585,000 such workers, with 3.7 million in insecure employment across the whole of the UK, 1 in 9 of the total workforce. They cannot afford to take 8 weeks unpaid leave.

As for the COVID-19 legislation proposed last week by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to extend statutory sick pay and benefit measures, it cannot be implemented under our already malfunctioning benefits system. Anyone who seriously believes that the government that within the past decade has been unable to oversee the transition to Universal Credit sufficient to stop millions of applicants having to live without payments for between 6 and 13 weeks — a system that has forced those dependent upon it into penury on hugely reduced benefits, left hundreds of thousands homeless and millions living from food banks — will now miraculously transform into hyper-efficiency and, without any re-assessment process, medical records or job-seeker requirements, pay out billions of pounds in statutory sick pay, as this legislation claims, ‘from day one’, really will believe absolutely anything. It can’t happen under the existing benefits system, and it won’t happen."

COVID-19 and Capitalism - Architects for Social Housing (ASH)

[Polski_Filip]

I dont do politics, but…

Philip Hughes (Dubai_Phil)

Hong Kong can test Dogs but UK can’t test NHS Staff?

[Fowllyd]

@Saint-or-sinner

“Focusing just on the UK as an example of such policies, the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson has instructed workers to self-isolate for 8 weeks”

Eight weeks? I haven’t seen that reported or mentioned anywhere. Where did that number come from?

[saintbletch]

Firstly, it would be churlish not to acknowledge that the 80% offer is significant.

But I imagine that the motivation for the move was not the wellbeing of those that otherwise would be without jobs, instead, it was all about the impact on the economy.

Again, I’m not suggesting that that isn’t a good enough reason to do it. It is. But history can’t dress this up as any form of social security measure.